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by KIM JANSSEN
 
SPECIAL REPORT: He fled war-torn Somalia 14 years ago, only to see his son cut down on the streets of Camden Town in the third knife murder in a month

Mahir grew up with a lost Somali generation ­ dad


Mahir Osman
MURDER victim Mahir Osman was a committed Muslim who grew up amid a “lost generation” of Somali youths in Britain, his devastated father has said.
Abdirahman Osman, who fled war-torn Mogadishu, Somalia, with the then five-year-old Mahir in 1992, said his son was studying mechanical engineering in Westminster and hoped to go on to University. He visited the London Central Mosque every Friday, he said.
Retired Mr Osman, part of a Somali forum which meets once a month at the House of Commons and also a community health campaigner, told the New Journal: “Mahir was a good boy, never in trouble and he moved in with me when I divorced my wife to help me, because I am getting old and am ill and need someone to help me get in and of the bath and so on.
“He was always home by 11pm and he was waiting at the bus stop to come home when they killed him – what can I say about that?”
He added: “The young generation of Somalis here is lost – I don’t know what you can do about it.”
He dismissed suggestions that tribal rivalries exacerbated by the civil war in Somalia played a role in the attack, adding: “The younger generation is not connected to that – most of them do not even know about it.”
Mahir, a keen basketball player at Talacre Sports Centre in Kentish Town, had attended Paddington Green School and enjoyed playing Playstation games.
He was close to his three brothers and two sisters, most of whom lived with his mother in Gilbey’s Yard, Chalk Farm, and would have made the Haj to Mecca “like all Muslims, if he had the opportunity”, Mr Osman said.
Pal Will Ayok said: “Mahir never got in an argument with anyone.
“Everyone will remember him.”
Friends and relatives mourning Mahir at the Horn of Africa, a popular Somali cafe in Kentish Town Road, all endorsed that view.
A cousin, who did not want to be named, said: “He was good, he was just a bystander who got caught in the crossfire.”
 
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