‘Loner’ guilty of mosque murder
AN unemployed ‘loner’ intent on spilling as much blood as possible ploughed a hire van into a group of Muslims after becoming radicalised by far-right material within just a few weeks.
Darren Osborne, 48, deliberately mowed down worshippers outside two mosques in north London, shortly after 12.15am on June 19 last year, killing Makram Ali, 51, and injuring 12 others.
A jury of eight women and four men took one hour to convict the father-of-four, who was seen smiling and blowing a kiss to bystanders in the moments after the terror attack, of murder and attempted murder.
Osborne, who had denied both charges, nodded and looked around the courtroom as the verdicts were delivered at Woolwich Crown Court.
Part way through his trial, the father of four from Glyn Rhosyn, Cardiff suddenly denied he had been driving the van at the moment of impact – an eleventh hour defence the prosecution dismissed as being conjured ‘out of thin air.’
The attacker said he had no idea Dave – one of his two made-up accomplices – intended to smash into a group of pedestrians, and believed they were on their way to a pub to meet a third co-conspirator, Terry.
But jurors agreed with prosecutors who dubbed his increasingly improbable version of events a ‘total fabrication’ and ‘frankly absurd.’
During the nine-day trial Osborne told the court he had wanted to kill senior Labour figures, including leader Jeremy Corbyn and London Mayor Sadiq Khan. The attacker admitted he had initially hoped to ‘plough through’ as many people as possible at the pro-Palestinian Al Quds march in central London, previously attended by Mr Corbyn.
But after driving a hire van from Cardiff to London on June 18, road closures thwarted Osborne’s plan.
Instead he travelled across London in hunt of a mosque, eventually ending up in Finsbury Park in Mr Corbyn’s constituency at around midnight.
CCTV footage shows the van circling roads close to the Muslim Welfare House and Finsbury Park mosque, before turning hard left onto a crowded pavement.
Two minutes earlier Mr Ali had collapsed on the floor after attending evening prayers, just 100 yards from his front door, prompting bystanders to rush to his aid.
Witnesses said he had been conscious and had wanted to go home in the moments before being struck by the van, which killed him almost instantly. Two others were seriously injured.
Prosecutors will ask the court to take into account the fact this was a terrorism offence when Osborne is sentenced today.