so hard done by. have posted this ages ago, but one of my mates of a mate from uni was a victim of aki. we have spent years taking the piss out of him and next thing we know he is on the bbc as one of the aki survivors.
John Youssef, 37, runs USC gym in Formby, Merseyside. Every time he goes to the pub these days, someone asks him to tell his anecdote about how he squatted Arobieke. Among his friends it’s a running joke, but at the time of the encounter he didn’t find it funny at all.
Youssef was 15, a keen weightlifter. He’d gone to Liverpool city centre to buy protein powder from a sports nutrition shop. As he and a friend crossed a road, he says, Arobieke bumped into him from behind. He told Youssef that he recognised him, enquired which gym he went to, and asked where he was going.
Then, Youssef says, Arobieke asked him to come to the Crown Court with him. There were two murderers on trial and they could go to watch. Youssef said no, and Arobieke asked if he was racist. “I’m half Arabic, I’m not racist,” he says. “But it was his way of intimidating me.”
He ended up following to the court building, alongside a non-weight lifting friend who was ignored by Arobieke. Once they were inside the building, Youssef says he was led into a small, windowless room.
“He was stood in front of the door. He said: ‘Take your top off.’ I said I didn’t want to. He said: ‘I’m into bodybuilding, I just want to see.’
“He had me flexing my muscles, doing bodybuilding poses. He said: ‘I want to see how strong you are. Pick me up in a fireman’s lift and squat.’ He gets me to do a fireman’s lift and I’m doing squats with him over my shoulders.”
Youssef can’t remember exactly how many squats he managed to do in this position. It was double figures, he reckons. Eventually, he says, “I just put him down away from the door and legged it. I ran and didn’t look back.”
Youssef tried to forget about the bizarre encounter. He went on holiday with his family soon after. When he returned, he went to visit a friend. They were standing outside, and his friend turned to him and said: “There’s a big black fella looking over the fence." It was Arobieke, Youssef says.
At 10.30 that night he made his way home on his bike. “As I’m riding on the pavement on my way back, he jumps out of the bushes and grabs me,” Youssef remembers. “I said: ‘What are you doing?" He says: I’ve come to measure your muscles.’ He puts his measuring tape around my arms and my chest. He goes to put it around my legs but I run off.”
When he got home, Youssef called the police. Arobieke was never charged in connection with his encounters with Youssef. But officers recognised the pattern of behaviour: “They knew who he was straight away.”
