Police investigating the suspicious deaths of two black men in Telford, Shropshire, have widened their enquiries to include the death of Akofa Hodasi, a [GHANAIAN] student found hanging from a tree near his home in rural Surrey two years ago.

Harold McGowan, a 34-year-old builder was [also] found hanged in a Telford house last July, with the flex from an iron wrapped around his neck. His 20-year-old nephew Jason, a newspaper worker, was discovered hanging from railings near the local leisure centre at 6am on New Year's Day this year. Neither death has been resolved.

Mr Hodasi, the 24-year old son of a wealthy Ghanaian businessman, had been the victim of a terrifying campaign of racist abuse prior to his death in April 1998. Just two days before he was found hanged in the quiet, middle-class village of Frimley, Mr Hodasi had endured a violent racist attack by local thugs during which his best friend was stabbed.

He himself was told: "I'm going to carve you up black boy" and "you're black, I know where you live and next time I will shoot you". Despite the protestations of Mr Hodasi's family, Surrey police initially concluded that his death had been a straightforward suicide.

Now, amidst fears that all three deaths may be the work of neo-Nazi thugs, Surrey police are understood to have joined forces with officers investigating the mysterious hangings of the McGowans in Telford.

Earlier this week, officers from both forces attended a Scotland Yard meeting with the Metropolitan Police's racist and violent crimes task force.

The police believe there are striking similarities between Mr Hodasi's death and the Telford hangings.

Each of the three hanged men were young and black, living in predominately-white provincial towns. All had been the victims of extensive racist attacks, worsening shortly prior to their deaths. Both Harold McGowan and Akofa Hodasi had received overt death threats during the final months of the their lives. None had histories of depression, nor did they leave suicide notes.

Their families claim that racist stereotyping led police to bungle all three investigations. The McGowan family feel that West Mercia police waited too long after Harold's death to interview the racist suspects whose names they had given them. The West Mercia police argued that the force had "full regard to racial issues surrounding these cases", but the McGowan family and supporters vehemently disagree. "This cannot possibly be right. Harold was subjected to racist abuse and attacks for two years and nothing was done about it," said Errol Robinson, the family's solicitor. "From what point are they suggesting they paid this regard?"

Officers investigating Mr Hodasi's death took three weeks to interview four young white men known to have tormented the dead student - despite having been given their names by Mr Hodasi's family. Detective Superintendent William Harding, leading the investigation, subsequently admitted that he could only be "partially certain" as to the whereabouts of these identified antagonists on the night of Mr Hodasi's death.

"I cannot rule out the possibility that Akofa might have been strung up," he said. An inquest into the death of Mr Hodasi, held last year at Guildford Crown Court, returned an open verdict and concluded that other people could have been involved in his death.