‘My son died in the riots yet we don’t have justice’
Ten years ago Tariq Jahan lost his son in the unrest but his heartbreak changed everything, finds Eleanor Steafel
It was six days of civil unrest which saw more than 3,000 arrested, left 205 injured and five dead. Downing Street couldn’t quell the rioting, nor could police. In the end, it fell to one man – a father-of-three from Birmingham who had just lost his son on the fifth night of violence – to appeal for calm and social unity. Most people will remember those days in 2011 for the looting and the chaos; the footage of burning cars and stolen plasma TVs. For Tariq Jahan, it was the summer his son was brutally killed in front of him.
On the night of Aug 10, Jahan, a former lorry driver, returned from work to find a crowd growing in his street, preparing to spend the night protecting shops from looters. He had been watching what was happening in London in the wake of Mark Duggan’s death. Now the rioting was spreading. “It only came to Birmingham because the younger generation [realised] that the government hadn’t got control of London. Brixton was burning... The rest of the country realised that there’s no officers about, we can do what we want.”
A group of young men approached him, along with his sons Haroon, 20, and Tahir, 22, and asked if they would stand with them in “defending the community”.
“Obviously we said yes,” Jahan recalls today. All night they lined the street – he and his two boys, all of them boxers, with Haroon in particular “a lightweight [who] loved his boxing and he was very good”. Masked rioters walked past peacefully; the police seemed to stay away. Jahan recalls a neighbour asking when he thought the riots would end. “I said not before someone loses their life.” Around 1am, three cars arrived. One sped through the crowd, drawing people into the street. A second followed, driving around them. A third drove straight into them, hitting three men and speeding off. Jahan heard the impact and ran towards it, finding three bodies lying in the road. He dropped to his knees and gave the first man CPR. “I moved over and found that the second man... there was nothing I could do to save him.”
The third man was face down on the ground. “When I flipped him over, I saw my son Haroon.”
That image, Jahan says, will stay with him for the rest of his life. “He had a little piece of tarmac on his forehead. That was the only mark he had on his body and a little trickle of blood had run down the side of his nose and into his beard. The rest of him looked perfect.”
With his older son crying, begging him to do something, Jahan tried to start his son’s heart and felt it beat, but when he breathed into Haroon’s mouth, hot blood shot from his nose onto the side of his face. “I realised there was nothing I could do.”
Haroon, along with Abdul Musavir, 30, and Shahzad Ali, 31, were taken to hospital and pronounced dead hours later. Jahan was asked if he would like to see his son, who he had been told by doctors was fighting for his life. When he came into the room, Haroon was covered from his neck to his ankles. No one had told him his son had died.
Hours later, with a sixth night of violence looking likely, Jahan gave a speech to cameras which many credit with helping to bring an end to the riots.
“This is not a race issue,” he said, appealing for unity. “Please respect the memory of our sons, and the grief of
our family and loved ones by staying away from trouble and not going out tonight.”
Finally, he pleaded, “I lost my son. Step forward if you want to lose your sons. Otherwise calm down, and go home. Please.”
A media frenzy followed. Jahan was hailed a hero. Politicians wanted to shake his hand (or, at least, be photographed shaking his hand) and celebrities wanted to meet him. He was given a Pride of Britain Award, which he remembers being baffled by. “My son is dead and
I’m being given an award. What for? It didn’t make sense to me.”
He adds: “There were some nice people, some very good people, but there were a lot of people who wanted to use [me] or the moment.”
The one person who truly helped, he says, was Prince William, whom he met “a couple of times.” The Duke immediately “put me at ease” during that first talk “by saying ‘call me William’.”
“His words all those years ago were very comforting and a source of strength at the time when I believed that I’d lost everything. He gave me that strength to open the charity. He said, you’re a very astonishing man... ‘you’re the light that people look at and you need to push forward with this’.”
The Prince, he says, spoke to the Charity Commission and instructed them to help him set up a charity in his son’s name. The Haroon Tariq Jahan Foundation works both in the local community in Birmingham and abroad. It has given Jahan purpose, taking him to Syria where he delivered aid to a refugee camp, and connecting him with other parents in Britain who have lost children.
In the decade since Haroon’s death, Jahan, now 56, has fought for his son’s legacy. First in court, where in 2012, eight men accused of the murders were acquitted. West Midlands Police were accused of not revealing that they had offered witnesses immunity from prosecution. The judge accused the lead investigator of lying under oath and eventually told the jury to disregard much of the evidence. The three men died, it was found, in a “tragic accident”. Jahan and the families believe justice has not been done.
“I’ve asked for a public inquiry”; Theresa May’s administration, he says, told him they were too expensive. “To tell a parent that his child is not worth an inquiry was heartbreaking.”
As for taking on West Midlands Police, “I’m not that wealthy. It costs a lot of money to hire solicitors, to fight. So I’ve put that on the back burner.”
Haroon was a talented mechanic who was determined to run his own
‘Prince William’s words were very comforting and a source of strength’
business before his untimely death; Jahan still has his Mistubishi Evo parked in the garden. “I’ll not sell it,” he says. He and his wife, Tahira Yasmin, commemorate their son at his grave every Thursday. “She sits there, she prays and she just cries,” says Jahan. “No matter what I do I can’t comfort my wife. She wants me to bring him back somehow. I can’t do that. I feel powerless, weak.” He feels forgiveness for his son’s killer, who “has got a lot more demons to deal with than I have. I forgive him from the bottom of my heart.”
He doesn’t blame the public, nor does he feel the riots truly ended on Aug 11 2011. “I can see future trouble. This lockdown and Covid-19 has pushed people so far. All it needs is a small spark and we could have the same problem.”
On the anniversary of his death on Tuesday, the family will visit Haroon’s grave. He would be 30 by now; to Jahan, it’s as if no time has passed. “It feels as if Haroon has been sat on my shoulder for 10 years and I haven’t been able to walk away,” Jahan says. “I can’t leave him.”
The Riots 2011: One Week in August will be broadcast on BBC Two on Aug 9 at 9pm. haroontariqjahanfoundation.org