Introduction

In July 2013, Bijan Ebrahimi was brutally murdered in Bristol, UK. The 44-year-old mentally disabled man, who had come to Britain as a refugee from Iran, had sought help from the police on a number of occasions because of the escalating harassment that he was receiving from neighbours. Members of the local community had accused him of being a paedophile after finding him taking photographs of young people who he had thought were vandalising his hanging baskets. He was arrested but quickly released due to a lack of evidence. Ebrahimi telephoned the police the day after his release from arrest, saying: ‘My life is in danger. Right now a few of my neighbours are outside and shouting and calling me a paedophile. I need to see PC Duffy’ (Peachey, 2015). However, PC Duffy did not attend, or even speak to Bijan, characterising him as an inconvenience and a nuisance. The next day, Lee James, a local neighbour, dragged Ebrahimi from his home and kicked him until he was unconscious. James was then joined by another neighbour who poured white spirit over Ebrahimi and set him on fire. James was eventually convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison while Stephen Norley, who set Ebrahimi alight, received a four-year custodial sentence. As a result of failings leading up to the murder, 18 police officers involved in the case also faced disciplinary proceedings; two officers were given prison sentences for failing to protect Bijan.

The case presents a complex mix of factors that point towards the difficulties faced by victims of disablist hate crime, particularly those with mental disabilities or learning difficulties. In the previously discussed instance, we see a criminal justice response that criminalises the victim (in that Ebrahimi was arrested on suspicion of paedophilic offences) and, once exonerated, fails to take the required action to protect a vulnerable person. Despite the repeated acts of hostility directed towards him, no prosecutions – including for his eventual murder – were brought under the disability hate crime provisions. This case, as with others outlined in this chapter, illustrates a key area of concern to (disability) hate crime theorists: the arbitrary nature of criminal justice responses discerning between ‘disability hate crime’ and disabled persons being victims of (hate) crime.