Update, December 11 2020: Pawel Uczciwek was found not guilty of racially aggravated common assault at the end of a two-day trial at Blackfriars Crown Court in London on October 1 2019.
An architect at the centre of a suspected hate crime has denied trying to pull off a Muslim woman’s hijab and spitting at her friend, saying his girlfriend was “attacked” first.
British Transport Police (BTP) launched an appeal to trace the man after a woman tweeting under the name Aniso Abdulkadir posted a photo of her alleged attacker on Saturday.
In the tweet, that has been shared over 30,000 times, Abdulkadir claimed the man set upon her while she waited for a train on Baker Street station early that morning.
Abdulkadir wrote: “He proceeded to verbally abuse my friends and I, pinning one of them against the wall and spitting in her face.”
She added that a woman who was present “was throwing out threats and was also verbally abusive”.
BTP confirmed the incident is under investigation as a hate crime, but as of Monday morning, no arrests had been made. A spokesperson told HuffPost UK that inquiries were still ongoing.
A man identifying himself online as Pawel Uczciwek tweeted in response to Abdulkadi’s claims on Sunday, seemingly outing himself as the man being sought.
Uczciwek claimed that his partner “was attacked” by three people and that he had stepped in to “defuse it”.
He later also tweeted a statement saying that his alleged “attackers” were objecting to him and his partner being “in an interracial relationship”.
In a statement on Sunday, Uczciwek wrote: “In regards to recent events I was accused of a completely false allegation because I defended my partner by trying to completely diffuse a racist attack from three other random females.
“As a result, one of the females in particular responded by making malicious completely false allegations against me and I would like to confirm I never hit or attacked anyone I simply defused the situation by separating them.
“The police is fully cooperating with me and will be able to obtain CCTV footage showing the three woman attempting to attack my partner because we are in an interracial relationship. I would advise anyone sharing or responding to this material to exercise caution as this is now a criminal investigation.”