It did not occur to Yasir Abdelmouttalib to be afraid. And he paid little heed to friends warning him against wearing Islamic white robes to prayers. That decision seems to have cost him his health and his future. It almost cost him his life.
Yesterday the trial ended of three 14-year-old boys accused of a vicious attack on the 22-year-old university graduate as he waited for a bus in Willesden, north-west London, one Friday afternoon in June.
The jury heard how three boys taunted and spat at Mr Abdelmouttalib through the bus window and how, when he remonstrated, one boy took ferocious revenge. Mr Abdelmouttalib, a tall, slight figure, was repeatedly punched and kicked and struck in the head with a heavy roadsweepers’ broom.
One teenager was convicted at Harrow crown court of causing grievous bodily harm with intent and will be sentenced on December 20. Two others, who denied taking part in the attack, were acquitted.
Mr Abdelmouttalib was unable to give evidence. He remains in hospital, brain damaged and paralysed. He has lost most of his sight.
He told the Guardian that he still retained his spirit: “Everything has changed, but they will not defeat me … I was an active man. Now I can’t do anything. I can’t read, my memory is failing. I had to stop my studies.” He hopes to do a PhD one day. “But who can tell? My life is in the hands of Allah.”
His speech is slow and slurred, but his anger is palpable. “I would sentence him to death because as far as I am concerned, he wanted to kill me. He hit me as if I had sworn at him or killed someone he loved.”
He believes his tunic and beard may have singled him out. “All the time television talks about Osama bin Laden and I think they thought, ‘Let’s take revenge.’ They are not human beings. No human would attack someone like this.”