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A woman has described how her two children have been targeted by police after they all attended a Black Lives Matter protest in Cardiff earlier this year, with one of them summoned to court and facing possible jail time. 

Image: Mohamud Hassan protest outside Cardiff Bay Police Station, January 2021, Glyn Owen

When Claire James accompanied her two children to a protest over the death of the young Black man, Mohamud Hassan, in January, she didn’t expect to for three CID officers to turn up at her door and eventually see her son in court as a result. 

But this is what she now faces, as her 19 year old child is charged with assaulting a police officer for shining a torch towards their face. 

Her teenage daughter, just 14, was also brought in for questioning and placed on an education programme, after cops said she had used an offensive term against one of the officers at the protest.

Claire has described the whole ordeal of what happened, including how three plain clothed police officers tried to forcefully enter her home in search of her 14 year old daughter. 

All three had gone to the protests for Mohamud Hassan, the 24 year old Black man who died just hours after telling friends and family he had been physically assaulted by South Wales Police in January. 

The case is ongoing, with an inquest into the death yet to report. However an initial autopsy report did confirm that Mohamud had injuries to his body at the time of death, and multiple officers are under investigation for misconduct, including excessive use of force. 

When news of his death and treatment by the police emerged, daily protests were held outside Cardiff Bay Police station, involving hundreds of people, many of whom had known Mohamud. Their anger was mainly directed at the police, but the events remained peaceful. 

Claire and her children were among the crowd, and assumed that attending did not warrant a home visit from the South Wales Police.

This, however, is exactly what happened, and she says that when police turned up at her house, they tried to enter by jamming their foot in the door and saying ‘we know she’s in there,’ in reference to her 14 year old child. 

One of the CID officers present told Claire that the back of her house had also been surrounded by uniformed cops in riot vans. At no point was anyone in the property accused of a violent offence. 

The two teenagers went to Cardiff Bay Police station, accompanied by their mother, and were interrogated. No immediate legal action was taken, although her daughter was referred onto ‘diversity pathway’ training. 

A few days later, the mother received a phone call from social services, who knew about the incident with the police and wanted to know why the mother was taking her children to a protest. After Claire protested with social services that the response was completely disproportionate, they closed the case. 

Then, months later, in early June, her 19 year old son received a letter through the post confirming that he had been charged with obstructing an officer and common assault, after police said that he had shined a torch in an officer’s face, affecting their sight. 

Claire James, who lives in Splott, Cardiff, has described the whole story in detail, and thinks that the police identified her children from items of clothing cross matched with social media. 

She believes the heavy handed and aggressive nature of the police response towards attendees of the protests was designed to intimidate people and make them less likely to attend future protests. Her children are not the only ones who have been targeted by police after attending the protests, but voice.wales is not aware of any others that are still ongoing. 

These are the full details of what happened. It shows the shocking way in which political dissent is being attacked.

“They were trying to push their way through the door,”

One morning in mid February, Claire was at home in Splott with her children. They were just about to start their online school lessons when the police knocked at the door. Initially, there were only two plain clothes CID officers, a man and a woman, and she opened the door to speak to them. 

“They were trying to push their way through the door,” recalls Claire. “I said, ‘what do you think you’re doing?’ 

“And they said, ‘well, if we think she’s in here, we can come in.’”

“And I said, ‘well no, you’re not.’” 

Claire refused to let them in and said that her children had attended the protest with her and had done nothing wrong, but the police were insistent that they had to speak to the 14 year old. 

Claire told the police that they could come back later when the children had finished their school work, which they agreed to. 

“They didn’t seem to have a problem with me, it just seemed to be with the kids,” she said. 

When the officers came back, they brought another CID officer with them, a man which the mother said was more aggressive than the others. 

“The one police officer was trying to push his way through the door, like pushing his leg through the door and saying, ‘right we think she’s in here, we can come in here. And I said you actually can’t.”

Eventually the police came into the house, and accused the 14 year old of using a homophobic term towards a male officer.  

They said that they also wanted to take Claire’s 19 year old son down to the station in connection with the protest. 

“I don’t even know how they could even possibly find the identity of my children,” she said. “I really don’t know how they managed to find that out. If they’d had a record and then went and looked and thought ‘oh right we know this person,’ but I just don’t know how they found out.” 

She suspects that her daughter’s green gel nails and her son’s coat, the only things that could be made out on dark police footage, were cross referenced with social media. 

When the police were at the house, Claire questioned why it took three CID officers to come round her house for the incident, and she was told that the back of her house was also surrounded by uniformed cops in vans. 

The mother accompanied her children to Cardiff Bay Police station, believing this would at least mean that their statements would be properly recorded and the best way to prove their innocence.

“So we went down,” she recalled. “My son had his interview, the solicitor came back with him and was like, “they tried saying it was an assault on a police officer and an emergency worker,’ because they were obviously thinking about the torches.” 

In the interview, the police described their fellow officers as emergency workers and accused the19 year old of assaulting them by shining a torch at them. The police asked her son if he had brought a torch to the protest. 

“Apparently they said police officers were emergency workers,” Claire said. “And that his [the police officer’s] sight had been lost for a couple of seconds [from the torch being shone at them].” 

She said that when the solicitor asked the police to provide evidence of the injuries, they couldn’t do so and her son declined to comment on their questions. Many people shone torches at the police that night, in a symbolic collective act to ‘shine a light’ on the police themselves. 

When it came to her 14 year old daughter, police played a video from the protest and said she has used the homophobic word ‘batty’ towards one of the cops present, which was why three officers had come round the house in search for her. The daughter said she wasn’t aware of the words homophobic connotattions. 

In the days following, Claire was called by someone from social services, who she presumed must have been informed by the police as they knew the details of the case. 

Claire said the tone was aggressive, and they demanded to know why she was at a protest with her children and said they wanted to call the school. She refused this, saying there was no need. 

“Obviously I got a bit rude on the phone in the end,” she told voice.wales. “I said. ‘you’re ringing me up, this is absolutely pathetic.’ There’s been nothing. You know, my children were with me. They did nothing wrong. We attended a protest. It was a peaceful protest and now I’m getting rung up and being scared by social services.” 

In the days following, a man from the diversity pathway phoned, and agree that the police response was excessive. In the months since, her daughter has had to attend diversity training, which Claire thinks hasn’t achieved anything. 

Then, in early June, after not knowing what was happening with her son’s case, the family received a letter, shown to voice,wales, stating that he had been charged with obstructing an officer and common assault, and will face trial in early July. The solicitor has told the family that he could go to jail for up to three months in the worst case scenario. 

“They want people to be scared.”

Claire says that her son is now worried about how this could affect his chances of getting a job, and the whole action has been designed to intimidate people. 

“They didn’t really have any evidence to call us down there in the first place…I don’t know if they’re trying to make examples out of people who were down there.”

The news of Mohamud’s death sparked a wave of street protests in Cardiff over several consecutive days in January. No major incident occurred at any of the events, but there was justified outrage directed at the police. 

But in the weeks and months since, a number of protesters received police visits, with one even saying he was dragged out of bed by cops and bundled into the back of a van. 

Claire said her son was instantly fearful of attending further protests. 

“There was another protest and he said he wasn’t coming down because he was worried he would get arrested,” she said. 

“That’s what they want people to be. They want people to be scared and not to go there. That’s obviously what their plan is, you know what I mean?” 

The fight for justice for Mohamud Hassan continues, despite being held up and frustrated by the authorities, who refuse to show the family any video footage of the incident. An inquest is not set to conclude until next year, and the IOPC have admitted that they haven’t been able to obtain vital footage of his arrest from South Wales Police.

The case was brought to light again this week with the death of Leighton Jones, the 30 year old man who died after being forcibly restrained by South Wales Police officers. 

Claire James knew Leighton Jones’s family, who are from the same area. “I just think it’s disgusting,” she said. Claire said she saw a clear similarity between the two cases, and thought the police were out of control. “We’re not America, they just don’t need to be so forceful.” 

“How many more times are we going to keep seeing this?”

*this article was updated on Sunday 27th June