Death of British MP David Amess: the defendant found guilty of murder and terrorism

Published on: 04/11/2022 – 17:51 Ali Harbi Ali, who fatally stabbed British MP David Amess while on parliamentary duty in October, was found guilty on Monday of murder and preparation of terrorist acts by a London court. The author of the fatal stabbings against MP David Amess – whose case had upset the United Kingdom – was found guilty on Monday April 11 of murder and preparation of terrorist acts. 18 minutes for jurors in London’s Old Bailey court to deliberate and convict Ali Harbi Ali, who was born and raised in London in a family of Somali descent. His sentence will be handed down on Wednesday. Judged since March 21, he refused to stand up to hear the verdict delivered by Judge Nigel Sweeney, citing religious reasons. The young man had pleaded not guilty, but he had declared, last week, at the hearing, having targeted the 69-year-old elected official because he had voted in favor of air strikes in Syria. “I killed him because he was hurting Muslims,” ​​he said. “I felt that if I could kill someone who decided to kill Muslims, it could prevent more harm from being done to those Muslims,” he continued. “Perhaps it sends a message to his colleagues” too. Frustrated at not going to fight in Syria himself with the Islamic State organization, the accused said to himself that he had to “try to do something here to help the Muslims there”. on October 15, 2021 as David Amess, father of five, received his constituents at a Methodist church in Leigh-on-Sea, 60 kilometers east of London. “Fanatical, radicalized Islamist terrorist” The death of the MP, elected since 1983, had rekindled the trauma of the assassination of Labor elected Jo Cox in June 2016. The 4-year-old MP had been killed by several bullets and stab wounds by a right-wing extremist, Thomas Mair, 53, a week before the British referendum on membership of the European Union. These two tragedies have sparked calls to strengthen the security of elected officials and to calm an electric political debate in recent years, especially since the exchanges around the Brexit.Ali Harbi Ali had, according to British media, sui vi briefly a program to fight against radicalization, without being considered at risk by the security services. Tried for preparing acts of terrorism between May 1, 2019 and September 28, 2021, he had been described by the prosecutor as a “fanatic, radicalized Islamist terrorist”. He had planned to kill other deputies, and had lurked around the Parliament armed with a knife last summer, had conducted research on several elected officials and had visited several times near the home of Minister Michael Gove. Affirming during the trial to be “a moderate Muslim”, the Londoner assured that he had no regrets: “If I thought I was doing something wrong, I would not have done it”. The United Kingdom has experienced several jihadist attacks with a knife in recent years, some claimed by the Islamic State organization. No claims have been made public since the death of David Amess. A month after the murder of the MP and the day after the explosion of a taxi outside a hospital in Liverpool (north of England) – considered by the police as an attack – the government had raised the level of the terrorist threat on British soil to “serious”. It has since been downgraded to “important”. With AFP