Telford friends in court after brawling
A Kurdish man who was attacked with his friend by a group of white males in Wellington asked magistrates why after six months their assailants had still not been found.
Rebaz Babaker and Aram Mamad Abdulla were originally due to stand trial on Friday on a charge of using threatening words and behaviour with intent to cause fear and violence which they had both denied.
However, on the day of the trial the pair pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of acting in a disorderly manner when they appeared at Telford Magistrates Court.
Mr Chris Coughlan, prosecuting, said he accepted that Babaker and Abdulla had not started the fight which broke out in Church Street on April 2. He told magistrates that two or more males had started a fight with the two men. "What they should have done – I know it's easy for me to say – is to walk away. They didn't, they fought in the streets," he said.
The fight was broken up by an off-duty police officer, but only Abdulla, of Redlands Road, Hadley, and Babaker, who now lives in Dunstan Court, Peterborough, were arrested, the court was told.
"It's a pity that these two others were not found by the police, because I can assure them now that if they had been they would have been in front of this court," added Mr Coughlan. He said police had not been able to find and identify the other men.
The court was told that the defendants, who were not represented in court but did have an interpreter, accepted that they should not have been fighting in the streets.
Abdulla told the court that he had seen the other men involved on five subsequent occasions afterwards and asked "how can the police not find them?"
Magistrates gave them both an 18-month conditional discharge and ordered them to pay a total of £100 in court costs each.
