East London woman: 'I was picked on in football racism case'

Jamila, from Tower Hamlets in east London, used the word online to refer to a black footballer.

She was eventually cleared after being represented by Ife Thompson, of Michael Mansfield’s Nexus Chambers.

In an exclusive interview with Newsquest, the 21-year-old psychology student said she had done nothing wrong and been left under extreme stress.

After her full name was misreported by national media, Newsquest agreed not to publish her correct name, as she has now been cleared.

Jamila’s ordeal began in December 2023, when police showed up at her house and said they needed to question her about a racial tweet.

“I was really confused,” she said. “I knew I hadn’t said anything remotely racist. I thought they must have the wrong person.”

In a police interview, she was told a post on X (formerly Twitter) had been referred to the Metropolitan Police Service by the Football Association (FA).

She had been “live tweeting” a match in August 2023, she said, when she wrote of a player: “I’m so p***** off let me get my hands on that f**** n***a.”

Shown the tweet, she told police “n***a” was a “reclaimed” version of the word “n***er”, commonly used by black people to refer to their own community.

“When I say the N-word, it’s not offensive, it’s not racist,” she insisted. “The friend I sent it to was a black American. We are both black and I was talking about another black person. So me having to explain to police that I’m not anti-black was very strange and absurd.”

Jamila didn’t post pictures of herself on X and her ethnicity might have been ambiguous, she said – but after her police interview it was known and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) charged her anyway.  

This, said barrister Miss Thompson, was despite the CPS never producing a single statement from anybody claiming to have found the tweet offensive.

Miss Thompson and instructing solicitor Ghislaine Sandoval obtained statements from three linguistic experts saying Jamila’s use of the word “n***a” was “rooted in black linguistic and cultural practices”.

Jamila was left in limbo for seven months before learning in July 2024 that she had been charged – after which she experienced “constant stress”.

“I have anxiety anyway, so I just thought, ‘Oh my God, what am I going to do?’” she said.

When she arrived at court for her plea hearing, she said: “I actually felt like a criminal. It was so insane. I’ve never been in trouble. I’ve never been in a court. I didn’t know they lock you in the dock. Once I was in there, I couldn’t really hear anything. It was a lot to deal with.”

There followed eight months of pre-trial hearings until, in March, she heard the case was being dropped.

“I was shocked, mainly because of how adamant they’d been about taking me to trial,” she said.

The CPS would only say: “After careful consideration, and in line with our duty to keep all charged cases under review, we have concluded there is no longer sufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction and the case has been discontinued.”

It was not the relief Jamila hoped for. The stress she had been living under was not easy to just forget.

“It was hard to believe it was over,” she said.

Now she’s had a few weeks to digest what happened, she finds it incredibly troubling.

“I understand the FA want to protect their players,” she said. “We’ve all seen what happened after the Euros 2020.

“But to prosecute black people for saying the N-word and not real racists is crazy – because you don’t have to look hard to find those racists. They are shameless.

“So the question I keep asking is, why was it mine they picked on and not these other people’s? I don’t know how many racist, non-black people have been charged, but I’m sure it won’t be many.”

She believes the prosecution was “politically motivated”, but the CPS did not respond to that claim.

“These laws were put in place to protect minorities. Now they’re trying to flip the script and use them to prosecute minorities,” Jamila said.

“If I’d been convicted, what would that have meant for other black people like me who use the word casually?”

The FA declined to comment.