LONDON: A Moroccan man who stabbed to death a passer-by in the street in northeast England in what he later told police was revenge for Israeli action in Gaza was found guilty of murder on Thursday.
Ahmed Alid, 45, who had sought asylum in Britain, killed his 70-year-old victim after approaching him from behind on a road in Hartlepool the early hours of Oct. 15 last year, having previously attacked his housemate with two knives, prosecutors said.
After his arrest, he told detectives he had committed the acts because of the conflict in Gaza, and in revenge for Israel killing innocent children, blaming Britain for creating Israel, Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said.
Alid said if he had had a machine gun, and more weapons, he would have killed more people.
“By his own admission, Ahmed Alid would have killed more people on that day if he had been able to,” Nick Price, Head of the CPS Special Crime and Counter Terrorism Division, said in a statement.
“Whatever his views were on the conflict in Gaza, this was a man who chose to attack two innocent people with a knife, and the consequences were devastating.”
Alid had first used two knives to attack his sleeping housemate, to whom he had become aggressive after learning of his conversion to Christianity, stabbing him six times while shouting “Allahu Akbar,” or “god is greatest,” the CPS said.
The 32-year-old housemate, one of five asylum seekers who shared the property, managed to fight him off and another occupant came to his aid. Alid left the house with one of the knives and walked toward the center of Hartlepool.
He passed Terence Carney on the opposite side of the road before circling back and attacking him from behind, stabbing him six times in the chest, abdomen and back. Carney died shortly after police arrived.
Following his interview with police, he attacked the two female detectives, with one suffering injuries to her shoulder and wrist.
He was found guilty at Teeside Crown Court of murder, attempted murder and two counts of assaulting an emergency worker. He will be sentenced on May 17, when the judge will decide if his actions were related to terrorism.
Moroccan man guilty of murdering man in UK in revenge for Gaza
https://arab.news/6vwys
Moroccan man guilty of murdering man in UK in revenge for Gaza
- Ahmed Alid killed his 70-year-old victim after approaching him from behind
- After his arrest, he told detectives he had committed the acts because of the conflict in Gaza, and in revenge for Israel killing innocent children
French court slashes jails term for trio over 2020 teacher beheading
- Brahim Chnina, the Moroccan father of a girl who falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing the caricatures, had his 13-year sentence reduced to 10 years
PARIS, France: A French court on Monday reduced on appeal the jail sentences of three men convicted over the 2020 terrorist beheading of a teacher who showed a class cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
Samuel Paty, 47, was murdered in October 2020 by an 18-year-old radical Islamist of Chechen origin in an act that horrified France.
His attacker, Abdoullakh Anzorov, was killed in a shootout with police.
Two friends of Anzorov, French national Naim Boudaoud and Azim Epsirkhanov, a Russian of Chechen origin, had their sentences of 16 years in prison reduced to six and seven years respectively by a Paris court of appeal.
Both were accused of having driven Anzorov and helping him to procure weapons before the beheading.
Brahim Chnina, the Moroccan father of a girl who falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing the caricatures, had his 13-year sentence reduced to 10 years.
His daughter, then aged 13, was not actually in the classroom at the time and during the first trial apologized to the teacher’s family.
The court however left the 15-year term for French-Moroccan Islamist activist Abdelhakim Sefrioui untouched.
The quartet were among the seven men and one woman found guilty in 2024 of contributing to the climate of hatred that led to the beheading of the history and geography teacher in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, west of Paris.
Paty, who has become a free-speech icon, used the cartoons as part of an ethics class to discuss freedom of expression laws in France.
