The inquest will be held in July 2022. The public can donate to the Bashir family’s CrowdJustice page which is helping to fundraise the legal fees 

Since Mohannad Bashir was a child, his best friend has always been his younger brother Mouayed.

“He used to get me in a lot of trouble to be fair and I used to have to wrap it up for him,” Mohannad says. Younger brother Mohamed was soon born to join his older brothers, and the three of them became a trio of pranksters. “We were always causing mischief. It was a sweet childhood,” Mohannad says.

On the morning of the 17th February 2021, Mohannad, who was working in London, received a message from Mohamed saying that Mouayed, who was 29 at the time, had passed away.

“My first response was: ‘What? Call me,” Mohannad says, “I tried to make sense of the phone call. He was angry, he was upset, he was speaking way too fast.” When Mohannad then got hold of his dad and asked him what had happened, his dad told him that Mouayed had died after an encounter with the police. 

Yesterday, Mohannad and his family attended an inquest at Newport Coroner’s Court, where they found out that the full inquest into Mouayed’s death will take place in July 2022, the delay being due to a Covid backlog. It will be held in front of a jury and is where the family hopes to find the answers to what happened to their beloved family member. 

The inquest heard that Mouayed was restrained by police in his home before dying a short time later in hospital. Senior coroner for Gwent, Caroline Saunders, said that “the circumstances of his death, in that he died in or shortly after being in police custody, and that his cause of death is currently unascertained, require me to investigate his death under the terms of an inquest”.

Mohannad told The Voice that he’s glad the family has a date and a case.

“The fact that the coroner stated that they want to know exactly what happened and that it will be in front of a full jury is a positive outcome,” he said. “Between now and then, we’re going to have to stay put and keep campaigning and we’ll see what happens in July 2022.”

The Bashir family, who are Sudanese by heritage, came to the UK as refugees when the brothers were still children. After a period living in London, they moved to South Wales, where the family still lives now. It was in their family home in Newport, in Mouayed’s own bedroom, where an encounter with Gwent Police took place. 

In an Exclusive interview with The Voice, Mohannad shared the family’s personal account of the events surrounding his brother’s death:

The family’s side of the story

After receiving the tragic news, Mohannad booked a train ticket straight to Newport. During his journey, national news stories about what had happened to his brother were already being published.

“I couldn’t believe it. I assumed what happened to my brother would only happen in America,” he says. “I never thought it would happen to any of my friends here in the UK, and then it actually happened to Mouayed, my brother, in his own bedroom in the family home.”

When he returned home, his family told him what they saw to have happened. 

The month before Mouayed died, he was a victim of a stabbing. He was lucky to survive it, Mohannad says. After the incident, his parents noticed Mouayed’s personality change, and under heavy medication, he became paranoid that people were trying to kill him. It was post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) pretty much, Mohannad says.

On the morning of the 17th, Mouayed was worried that his stab wound on his thigh was not healing properly.

His dad called the GP and was advised to call an ambulance. Mohannad says that when his parents called the operator to request an ambulance, and they told them that Mouayed was also suffering a mental health episode, the operator kept responding with the same question: do you need an ambulance, the police, or the fire brigade?

Both his parents kept repeating that they wanted an ambulance, to which they kept getting the same question repeated back at them.

His dad got frustrated and said: just send something.

Meanwhile, Mouayed took a shower and got himself ready for the paramedics to arrive. The next thing the family knew, the police were knocking at the door. “I’m trying to picture this now because I’m in this room wondering about the state that he was in,” Mohannad says, looking around what was Mouayed’s old bedroom, as he talks to me over Zoom. “He was already mentally not there.

He was in fear. He was already scared about the state of the injury that he was trying to treat. He was expecting paramedics, but then the police turned up, and they came in with force.”

Four officers squeezed their way into the small room, Mohannad says. “That alone is just too much  – too many people in one space. There was a bit of activity, there was a bit of noise, there was a bit of whatever was going on in this room”, Mohannad says.

My dad was saying, ‘he’s already injured. What are you doing? Look, he’s bleeding again. Let go of him. Just let him breathe.”

His parents were trying to see what was going on, but were told not to interfere with police business, he explains. From outside the room, his parents heard an unfamiliar sound. When they recreated the sound to Mohannad, he says he knew it was the sound of a taser.

After that, Mouayed went silent. 

Mouayed’s dad then managed to get his head into the room. “He opened the door slightly and he saw Mouayed had been handcuffed and bound by his legs,”

Mohannad says. “My dad was saying, ‘he’s already injured. What are you doing? Look, he’s bleeding again. Let go of him. Just let him breathe.” Their dad noticed that Mouayed’s head was in the wardrobe too. “We have no idea how the whole thing happened. But my dad asked: ‘Is Mouayed’s airway clear? Is he breathing? Again, [the police said:] ‘Get out. We know what we’re doing,’” Mohannad says. 

Their parents were still waiting for the ambulance to arrive. At this point the police also decided to call for an ambulance, Mohannad says. His mum, who has low blood pressure and heart problems, became overwhelmed and fainted.

Another ambulance was called for her. Mouayed and his mum were taken to the same hospital, where Mouayed was later pronounced dead.

Mohannad says the postmortem has not yet been finalised. But that from what he’s read, it doesn’t match what he saw when he went to the morgue to wash his brother’s body, a Muslim tradition done when a family member passes away.

IOPC has been ‘tight-lipped’

Gwent Police referred themself to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), which is currently investigating Mouayed’s death.  The IOPC’s statement, published the day after Mouayed passed away, said it had established that nine officers had gone to the property. 

But Mohannad says that the IOPC have been “very tight lipped”, and that to this day, the family still do not know how many police officers turned up to the property; how many of them have been investigated or still under investigation; or how many of them have been suspended. “Are they still working right now? Are they still out there doing their job? You never know they might commit the same mistake again to another innocent soul. Are they still on full pay, or getting bonuses, or have been promoted?”, he says.

In the past, the family had a very different relationship with the police.

As part of his role with the Welsh Refugee Council, the brothers’ dad used to deliver training sessions on integration and culture to the police. He would arrive home so proud and show off the pictures he’d taken with the sergeant at the police academy, Mohannad says. “But unfortunately whenever my dad trained and taught at the academy, it went in one ear and out the other. Sadly, his son was a victim of the consequences of them not taking [the training] on board.”

The family’s campaign

The family’s main priority is to find out the truth about what happened to Mouayed, who Mohannad describes as a “lovable guy” and the “soul of the party”.

Having previously lived in London, Mohannad moved to Newport to the family home a couple of weeks ago where they can support each other closely in their fight for the truth. Now sleeping in Mouayed’s old bedroom, he says he sits there everyday “wondering what would happen if only walls could talk”. 

The family has received a huge amount of support from across their community and on social media. The day after Mouayed died, more than 100 protestors gathered outside Newport’s central police station to demand answers. It came after Mohamud Mohammed Hassan died hours after being released from police custody in Cardiff less than a month before. 

An ongoing petition for the IOPC and Gwent Police to release the officers’ body camera footage to his family has reached 6,569 signatures out of its target 7,000, while the Justice for Mouayed Bashir CrowdJustice fundraiser campaign has raised £6,497 so far to help the family pay for legal fees.

After yesterday’s inquest, Mohannad says it was “surreal” as “there’s no manual book for this kind of thing”, but the fact the inquest is finally happening is “a huge leap for getting and demanding justice for Mouayed”. 

When he posted about the date on social media, his inboxes were full of people asking how to attend and show their support.

Mohannad says he wants to thank everyone who has been supporting them: “It’s beautiful, it’s overwhelming, it’s great […] because the power of the people is greater than the people in power.”