Christopher Yates

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Christopher Gerard Yates (born 9 Aug 1974) was a computer data inputter from Barking, East London who was murdered in November 2004 by a gang of three British Asian Muslims- Sajid Zulfiqar, 25, Zahid Bashir, 23, and Imran Maqsood, 21- all of whom travelled from Ilford.

Yates had not long left a musical event, and had seen a friend to her bus. Sometime afterwards, he was set upon outside of the Barking campus of the University of East London and kicked to death. His attackers then yelled in Urdu "We have killed the white man. That will teach an Englishman to interfere in Paki business." .^[1] Bashir, Maqsood and Zulfiqar then travelled to Ilford, where they damaged vehicles, racially abused a black resident and assaulted another in an alleyway.

Twelve people were arrested in connection with the murder; Zulfiqar, Bashir and Maqsood were all found guilty of murder on the 24th of November 2005 and given life sentences with a minimum 15 years. Despite the use of racial identifiers against their victim and the unprovoked nature of the attack, the judge declared that the motivation was not racial due to the fact that other victims of the group that night were of their own ethnic group. A fourth man, Junaid Khan, had already received sentencing earlier in the year for stealing Mr. Yates' phone as he lay injured.