Autistic man is still locked up for murder a decade after his friend stabbed a stranger

An autistic man has spent more than 10 years behind bars under joint enterprise laws for murder after his friend stabbed a man to death during a fight.

- HOLLY EVANS

For Alex Henry's family, their lives changed overnight when he set off with his friends for a day shopping in west London, which would result in his mother receiving a phone call from police to inform her that he had been arrested for murder.

While in Ealing Broadway on 6 August 2013, Henry and his friends became involved in a confrontation with four random older strangers, which resulted in belt buckles being used as weapons and punches being thrown.

After entering the scene late, Henry admitted, he threw a mobile phone and landed one punch before running away. Unbeknownst to him however, one of his friends, Cameron Ferguson, had concealed a knife in a carrier bag and used it to kill one man, Taqui Khezihi, and wound another.

It was only later that day that the then 21-year-old would discover that a stabbing had occurred during the 45-second scuffle, and that the victim had died a short while later in hospital.

With his partner pregnant with his daughter, his family had felt relieved when Ferguson pleaded guilty to murder, telling Henry “you can be a father now”. Despite this, and there being no evidence that Henry was aware of the knife, an Old Bailey jury convicted him for murder under “joint enterprise”.

Under the controversial joint enterprise law at the time, Henry and another associate were deemed by the jury to have been able to foresee that their friend had a knife, with the prosecutor arguing “friends tell each other everything”. The jury were not told he was autistic and had been incorrectly directed on the law.