Abdullah had been in a friend’s room, but he then returned to his own room on the second floor. When he got there, the window had been smashed and his room was full of smoke.
“Inside is all fire,” he added. “We couldn’t breathe and… we all have stress because we think today we will die.”
Abdullah said he then went back into the corridor, where he was faced with masked protesters who had broken into the hotel and come up to the second floor.
“I go outside of my room and I saw the five people with masks, black masks. I couldn’t see their faces. And he said ‘come to me, you want to fight with me?’. But the police came and he saved me, he protected me.
“If the police weren’t there, maybe I will be dead. We were scared, all scared… We couldn’t think what we could do.”
At the time, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer condemned the incident as “far-right thuggery”.
South Yorkshire Police described the violence as “nothing short of disgusting” and have since said more than 60 officers were injured in the incident, alongside four police dogs and a police horse.
Earlier on Thursday, the force said 38 people had been charged over the unrest, and 20 had been convicted.
Later, three men were jailed over the incident, bringing the number who have been sentenced to 11.
Abdullah has now been moved, like all those housed in the Rotherham hotel.
But the incident has affected him.
