Abdul Hai

Abdul Hai OBE (born 1974 or 1975) is a former Labour member of the cabinet of Camden Council. He has a Bangladeshi Muslim family background. At age 19, he was acquitted of the murder of Richard Everitt, a white boy who was stabbed to death by a gang of Bengalis. He is currently a director at LabTech, a company that owns and manages real estate in Camden, including Camden Market.

Murder charge, acquittal, and aftermath

On 13 August 1994, when Hai was 19 years old, Richard Everitt, a white boy from Somers Town, was stabbed to death by a gang of Bangladeshi boys, Consequently, charges were only brought against three boys alleged to have been involved: Badrul Miah, Showat Akbar, and Abdul Hai. Hai was jailed for six weeks before trial in Feltham Young Offenders Institution, where he says he overheard other prisoners plotting to set fire to him with petrol. In 2019, he put forward a motion calling for the adoption of the definition of Islamophobia by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims, which was carried.

In 2018, Hai joined calls for the resignation of Mary Hassell, the coroner for St Pancras Coroner's Court, whose jurisdiction includes Camden, saying she should move to an area with "fewer faith sensitivities". Hassell followed a "cab rank" policy of handling cases in the order they came in, saying it was unfair to prioritise cases where the deceased was Jewish or Muslim over those of other faiths. This led to opposition from faith leaders and politicians due to the obligation under Jewish and Muslim law to bury the dead as soon as possible. When the policy was struck down by the courts as unlawful later that year, Hai called it a "resounding victory for those who have campaigned for the coroner's service to be brought into the 21st Century".

In 2020, Hai was interviewed by Channel S, a UK-based TV channel aimed at Bangladeshis, to stress the importance of following the government's COVID-19 guidelines. He commented in a blog post that "Given the impact on the Bangladeshi community, it was important to reach out in ways that mainstream channels were unable to do".

In February 2021, Hai announced that Camden Council had set up a hate crime helpline in partnership with the charity Stop Hate UK.

On his website, Hai claims that he set up the (now-defunct) All-Party Parliamentary Group for sustainability in the curry industry.

Youth work

Hai was a youth worker prior to becoming a councillor, As a councillor, he co-chaired the Camden Youth Safety Task Force along with Keir Starmer, the area's local MP.

In the 2022 Birthday Honours, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) "for services to Young People and to the community in Camden and London".

Call for removal from the cabinet

In 2019, Conservative council member Oliver Cooper unsuccessfully called for Hai to be removed from the cabinet. Hai had not attended any cabinet meetings for six months. Of four scheduled meetings in the period, two had been cancelled, one had clashed with a public meeting Hai was attending elsewhere, and another clashed with a personal commitment of Hai's. Cooper claimed that the Local Government Act 1972 required the removal of any cabinet member who had not attended meetings for six months, and that Hai therefore could not legally remain a member of the cabinet.

The council's lawyers disputed this interpretation of the law, and a statement by the council noted that the Act allows the discharge of executive duties by a cabinet member to count as attendance at meetings, and that Hai had been "extremely active ... discharging his role as a cabinet member" over the six month period. He was not removed from the cabinet.

OPEN Newham described Hai as a "seemingly vacuous individual... with a penchant for overstating his own importance", but sarcastically suggested that he might nonetheless be "the chosen one" in West Ham and Beckton, in part due to his past connections to Starmer and to him being a Bengali (and the constituency having a significant Bengali population).

Political commentator Michael Crick, however, suggested Hai would be an "interesting" choice in light of the murder allegation against him in his youth. The Guardian reported that after he put himself up for selection, Hai was "flooded with abuse" on X, with "many" people claiming he was a convicted murderer.

Ultimately Hai was not selected and did not run in the 2024 general election.