by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) - An Islamist asylum seeker in the United Kingdom has been found guilty of attempting to kill his Iranian housemate for converting to Christianity and for murdering an elderly man he did not know on the street in Hartlepool, northern England, Christian Daily reports.
In the early hours of Oct. 15, Ahmed Alid, a 45-year-old from Morocco, attacked Javed Nouri, an Iranian fellow asylum seeker and housemate who had recently left Islam for Christianity and had joined a local Baptist church. Screaming “Allah Akbar [God is greater],” Alid stormed into Nouri’s bedroom as he slept and began stabbing him in the chest, Prosecutor Jonathan Sandiford told the jury during the trial at Teesside Crown Court last month.
“[Alid] appears to have regarded Mr. Nouri as an apostate, someone who had denied their religion and therefore for that reason deserved to die,” Sandiford told the court at a hearing on April 11. “Fortunately, Mr. Nouri woke up as he was being stabbed in the chest, and he was able to fight off the defendant,” Sandiford said.
Alid then went out onto the street armed with a knife and murdered 70-year-old passer-by Terence Carney by stabbing him several times in the chest, the prosecution said. Carney died at the scene.
Alid reportedly became especially unstable after the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, and began carrying a knife as an expression of solidarity with the Palestinians. “The defendant said to the police that he had wanted to kill any other people on the streets of Hartlepool that evening because of the conflict in Gaza and further his desire, as he saw it, that Palestine would be free from the Zionists, by which he meant the state of Israel,” Sandiford told the court. “The defendant said to the police that he would have killed more people if he had been able to do so.”
Alid had denied charges of murder and attempted murder before being found guilty, CD reports. He is due to be sentenced at Teesside Crown Court on May 17.