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Jury out in trial of student stabbing
JURORS in the Old Bailey trial of eight men accused of the murder of an 18 year-old student in the middle of Camden Town have retired to consider their verdicts.
The Saturday night attack on Mahir Osman in January last year brought the busy area to a standstill.
Hundreds of people watched in horror as he was cut down.
He was overwhelmed and repeatedly knifed in Camden High Street, opposite the Tube station, after getting caught up in rival gang violence between groups of fellow Somalis.
On Tuesday, after summing up the evidence in a trial spanning seven weeks, Judge Stephen Kramer, QC, sent the jury of nine women and three men into secret session behind locked doors.
He said they were under no pressure and could take as long as they wanted to discuss the case.
Mechanical engineering student Mahir, of Gilbey’s Yard, Chalk Farm, was repeatedly stabbed in a frenzied onslaught. Up to 30 were involved in the ambush.
Those in the dock admitted being present in the locality but they deny charges of murder, conspiracy to cause serious harm, plotting to possess weapons and violent disorder.
Four did not go into the witness box to testify – as is their right. Four of them have anonymity for legal reasons. Ismail Mohammed, 20, Liban Elmi, 20, Mohammed Mohamud, 18, and Abidirahman Mohammed, 18, can be named.
Other suspects face a separate trial in June.
Prosecutor Brendan Finucane QC told jurors that the CCTV footage of Mahir being knifed, punched, kicked and beaten “provides the clearest case of joint enterprise you are ever going to see.”
But defence barristers – some of the most prominent in the country – argued that their clients were not in Camden Town with murder in mind and many had become innocently involved in the outbreak of thuggery.
The case continues.
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