Mahmood Hussein Mattan was convicted on 24 July 1952 at Glamorganshire Summer Assizes, Swansea of the murder of Miss Lily Volpert in her shop in Cardiff on 6 March 1952
On the morning of September 3, 1952, Mattan, a young Somali sailor, was taken from his cell at Cardiff prison, marched to the gallows and hanged for a murder he didn't commit. Seven weeks earlier, in a parody of a trial, he had been found guilty of slitting the throat of Lily Volpert, a Cardiff shopkeeper. The hearing at Glamorganshire Summer Assize in Swansea was so steeped in racial bigotry that even Mattan's defence solicitor described him as a "half-child of nature; a semi-civilised savage".
Despite his limited grasp of English, he did not have an interpreter and the jury did not know that the prosecution witness on whom the case hinged had altered his statement and been rewarded for giving evidence. It took 46 years and a dogged family campaign before the Appeal Court overturned Mattan's conviction and allowed his Welsh widow, Laura, to exhume his quicklimed body from its felon's grave at Cardiff jail and rebury it in consecrated ground.
You'll have to read the full article to get a better understanding of the situation but above i have highlighted what he was accused of.