The Metropolitan police agreed to pay £60,000 damages to a British Muslim yesterday after admitting that officers had subjected him to a "serious, gratuitous and prolonged" attack.Babar Ahmad, who is accused of raising funds for terrorism, was punched, kicked, stamped on and strangled during his arrest by officers from the Metropolitan police's Territorial Support Group at his London home in December 2003.
For the past six years the police have repeatedly denied the claims, saying that officers used reasonable force during the arrest.
But on the second day of a hearing at the high court in London, lawyers for the Met commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, admitted Ahmad had been the victim of sustained and gratuitous violence during the raid at his home in Tooting, south-west London.
"The fact they have, after all this time, admitted to this grave and prolonged assault is quiet remarkable," said Ahmad's lawyer, Fiona Murphy.
During the hearing it emerged that the police had lost "a number of large mail sacks" containing details of other complaints against the officers who assaulted Ahmad. Other crucial documents, including the officers' contemporaneous notebooks and a taped recording of an interview with the senior officer in the case, were also lost.
Murphy said that from the files that had been handed over there appeared to be a pattern in the complaints made against the officers involved.
"The horrifying nature and volume of complaints against these officers should have provoked an effective response from the Metropolitan police and the IPCC long ago," said Murphy.
"Instead it has fallen to Babar Ahmad to bring these proceedings to achieve public recognition of the wrong that was done to him."
Last night a spokesman for the Met admitted the allegations against the officers and said the case had been settled.
"The police are duty-bound to act on information that identifies a real and serious terrorism threat to the safety of the public and it is a regrettable consequence of such operations that force may need to be used. However, we recognise any use of force must be proportionate and reasonable."
During his arrest Ahmad, a 34-year-old IT analyst working at Imperial College, was rammed against a window before being repeatedly beaten by officers dressed in riot gear.
Officers stamped on him, repeatedly punched him in the head and back before he was forced into the Muslim prayer position when officers shouted: "Where is your God now? ... Pray to him."
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