Knife spree man was illegal immigrant
By News Team ⋅
An illegal immigrant who went berserk and knifed two men after they sacked him from an Indian restaurant claimed to have been under a “http://wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3011" spell, a court heard.
Mohammed Ahmad, aged 26, slashed two men in east London in a video store in September 2005 and went on the run for more than a month. Ahmad, originally from http://wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3037 in High Street.
But within days he was sacked and he knifed both the owner and his son in front of horrified customers, Southwark Crown Court heard. Ahmad was arrested as the two men chased him up http://wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2420 High Street where he was confronted by British Transport Police officers near the railway station.
He later told police he had been experiencing hallucinations and believed a friend in his home country had been practising black magic on him. Following the first attack – which resulted in one man losing a kidney and three litres of blood, and another needing stitches – Ahmad went on the run, before pitching up in Swansea.Ahmad fled the scene and later got a job at the Himachal http://wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2919, where he was also offered accommodation upstairs. Prosecutor Daniel Robinson said: “Things didn’t work out and the owners found that Mr Ahmad was rude to customers. After being confronted, he stabbed his employer and his son, who had of course employed the illegal immigrant, fully aware of his irregular status in the country.
The court heard that Ahmad had arrived in the UK illegally from Bangladesh in 2000.
Ronald Jaffa, for Ahmad, said Ahmad had spoken of “thought influences”, and added: “While he was in Bangladesh, there was a belief that a friend was doing some black magic on him.”
Judge Gregory Stone passed an indeterminate prison sentence for public protection and ordered Ahmad to serve a minimum of four-and-a-half years. The judge said a psychiatrist’s report stated there was a real risk of Ahmad becoming violent again.
Black magic holds an important place in Islam, and is not limited to bumpkins and cranks. In 2004, Masoud Haroub Saidi, a Muslim member of the Tanzanian parliament, put a curse on his political opponents, threatening that it would make them “drop deadlike locusts. When we Muslims want to stop things from happening we use Halbadiri – an Islamic death curse. Halbadiri cannot harm a clean person. But those people who continue to commit such evil deeds will be affected,” he said.