Jabbar, Abdul

Abdul Jabbar was convicted in November 2011 of conspiracy to murder alongside his co-defendants, Wassab Khan, Faisal Saraj, Abdul Maroof and Omran Rashid.

The five men were convicted together at Stafford Crown Court in November 2011 for their parts in the shooting of Mohammed Afsar.

On 21st December, Wassab Khan, Abdul Maroof and Omran Rashid were sentenced to 24 years’ imprisonment. The two younger men, Faisal Saraj and Abdul Jabbar, were sentenced to 20 years’ detention in a young offender institution.

Together they appealed against their convictions but in June 2013 the Court of Appeal dismissed their appeals.

No application to the CCRC was made, but in January 2018 the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) approached the CCRC with information arising in a separate case which had a possible bearing on the safety of the convictions of Messrs Khan, Saraj, Jabbar, Maroof and Rashid.

The material, which was of a sensitive nature, was potentially relevant to the jury’s consideration of whether their intention had been to commit grievous bodily harm rather than to murder and arguably met the test for disclosure in relation to the allegation of conspiracy to murder.

The CCRC considered the material supplied to it by the CPS and concluded that this previously undisclosed information raised a real possibility that the Court of Appeal would quash the conspiracy to murder convictions.

The CCRC further considered that the Court could choose to substitute the convictions for conspiracy to murder with convictions for conspiracy to commit grievous bodily harm; this would have had a significant impact on the sentences required to be served by each man.

The CCRC referred the conviction in March 2018.

The Court of Appeal quashed the conviction in May 2018 and substituted it for conspiracy to commit grievous bodily harm.