Libyan asylum seeker jailed for life for UK triple murder
LONDON: A Libyan asylum seeker who stabbed three men to death in a rampage through a British park last year was jailed for life on Monday.
Judge Nigel Sweeney said Khairi Saadallah’s attack in Forbury Gardens, Reading, last June was so “swift, ruthless and brutal” that none of his victims stood a chance.
He rejected the 26-yearold’s argument that he was not motivated by terror and that he was mentally ill at the time of the killings.
Saadallah, who shouted as he fatally stabbed the three friends with an eight-inch knife and injured three more, pleaded guilty in November.
Judge Sweeney then heard arguments about whether Saadallah was motivated by religion, politics or ideology, and whether the attack was premeditated or influenced by his mental state at the time.
Sentencing him at the Old Bailey court in central London, the judge said Saadallah’s case had been “rare and exceptional”.
He had used combat experience gained while fighting in Libya’s civil war to target a “vulnerable area (and) inevitably cause death”, Sweeney said.
During the attack and afterwards, Saadallah had been
Sentencing him at the Old Bailey court in central London, the judge said Saadallah’s case had been ‘rare and exceptional’
“seeking to advance a political, religious or ideological cause”, the judge added.
James Furlong, 36, Dr David Wails, 49, and Joseph RitchieBennett, 39, were each killed with a single thrust of the knife in the attack, which lasted less than a minute, the court was told.
Three others — Stephen Young, 51, Patrick Edwards, 29, and Nishit Nisudan, 34 — were also injured before Saadallah fled the scene with an off-duty police officer in pursuit.
Witnesses described seeing a lone assailant walking through the park shortly after 7 pm on June 20 last year and stabbing his victims at random.
The attacker looked as if he had put his hands “in a big bucket of red paint”, one said.
Outside the court, David Wails’ brother Andrew told the BBC the loss had been “devastating” to the family. “We know that our lives and the lives of everyone who knew and loved David will never be the same,” he said.