Support group Joint Enterprise Not Guilty by Association to host meeting

Support group JENGbA (Joint Enterprise Not Guilty by Association), which has organised the event, claims there are many families in the Bradford area who are suffering injustices because relatives have been convicted under the law of joint enterprise, which allows for a group of individuals to be charged with the same offence if they had the same intention and foresight of what was to happen.

Local cases highlighted include Anthony Davies, who was one of five men convicted of the murder of Bradford businessman Teddy Simpson in August 2007.

Davies, of Lloyds Drive, Low Moor , Bradford, was said to have helped to hatch the plot to rob Mr Simpson and was ordered to serve at least 35 years behind bars. He lost an appeal against conviction two years ago.

Mohammed Niaz Khan, Abid Ashiq Hussain and Sharaz Yaqub – known as the Bradford 3 – were given jail sentences totalling nearly 90 years after father-of-four Shazad Hussain, 21, was shot dead at point blank range in his car in an alleyway off Leeds Road, Bradford, in September 2004.

They all had appeals dismissed four years later.

Laura Mitchell, then 22, and her boyfriend Michael Hall were given life sentences, with two other men, in October 2007 for the murder of Andrew Ayres, 50, who was attacked in the car park of the King’s Head pub, in Halifax Road, Buttershaw , Bradford. The pair, and a third defendant, were sentenced on the basis that they were secondary parties to the death. Mitchell had an appeal against her murder conviction rejected.

Casey Kellett and Sarah Hall, sisters of Mitchell and Hall, will be speakers at the event tomorrow, at the Interlink Grange Community Centre, in Summerville Road, from 11.30am, along with Anthony Davies’s father, Patrick, and Ishy Ahmed, brother of Abid Ashiq Hussain.

Casey Kellett said: “Joint enterprise is an important issue which not enough people know about. Hopefully this event will raise awareness of it.”