Mahmood Hussein Mattan (1923 – 3 September 1952) was a Somali former merchant seaman who was wrongfully convicted, in the United Kingdom, of the murder of Lily Volpert on 6 March 1952.

The murder took place in the Docklands area of Cardiff, Wales, and Mattan was mainly convicted on the evidence of a single prosecution witness.

[1][2] Mahmood Hussein Mattan was born in British Somaliland in 1923 and his job as a merchant seaman took him to Wales where he settled in Tiger Bay in the docks district of Cardiff.

[3][4] Lily Volpert, a 42-year-old woman who owned a general outfitter's shop in the Cardiff Docklands area, was murdered on the evening of 6 March 1952.

Later, other witnesses contradicted Mattan's alibi and the police interrogated him at length, and organised an identification parade attended by Lily Volpert's sister, mother and niece, but they did not identify him.

But Mattan's counsel suggested she was lying and motivated by a reward of £200 (equivalent to £7,269 in 2023) that had been offered by the Volpert family, of which Cover later received part.

Mattan's barrister succeeded in having a large part of the prosecution evidence ruled inadmissible because of the restrictions that then existed on questioning suspects in custody.

[10][11] In 1954 Tahir Gass, the man seen outside Lily Volpert's shop by Harold Cover, was convicted of murdering wages clerk Granville Jenkins in a country lane near Newport, Monmouthshire.

[12] In 1969 Harold Cover was convicted of the attempted murder of his daughter in Cardiff, by cutting her throat with an open razor, and sentenced to life imprisonment.

[13] Mattan's middle son, Omar, was found dead on a Scottish beach in 2003, and an open verdict was returned.

[10] In July 2006, his youngest son, Mervyn Edward Mattan, known as Eddie, was sentenced to six months imprisonment for his part in a failed bank robbery.

Mervyn Matan died in June 2011, and was discovered at his home by a former girlfriend surrounded by several empty bottles of sherry.

[17][18] In 1996 the family was given permission to have Mattan's body exhumed and moved from a felon's grave at the prison to be buried in consecrated ground in a Cardiff cemetery.

On 24 February 1998 the Court of Appeal came to the judgement that the original case was, in the words of Lord Justice Rose, "demonstrably flawed".

[21][22] Nadifa Mohamed's novel The Fortune Men (2021) is based on the murder of Lily Volpert and the trial and execution of Mahmood Hussein Mattan.

[23] In 2022 actor and writer author Danielle Fahiya presented, wrote and produced BBC Sounds Mattan: Injustice of a hanged man.