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Mahir’s father Abdirahman confronted then home secretary Charles Clarke days after the killing |
Three guilty of frenzied, cruel stabbing of Mahir
Five others belonged to 40 - strong pack Old Bailey jury decides
THREE teenaged members of a violent gang who came into Camden on a mission of revenge were convicted on Tuesday of murdering an 18 year-old student in front of a shocked Saturday night crowd.
Five other gang-members who were part of the pack of 40 armed men who descended on Camden High Street last January were cleared of murder but found guilty of crimes of serious violence.
Mahir Osman, from Swiss Cottage, was killed in less than a minute by a rain of blows and knife wounds that punctured every major organ in his body.
The gang which included his killers hijacked a 253 bus in an attempt to escape but most ended up trapped inside and were arrested.
Police found a scattering of knives and other weapons littered around the bus and the street under its windows.
Ismail Mohamed, now 20, from Haringey, Liban Elmi, now 20, from Wood Green, and a third man who cannot be named for legal reasons, were convicted of his murder at the Old Bailey.
For eight weeks, the jury had been given an insight into life – and death – among the teen gangs of north London.
The “cruel, hideous, fast moving and frenzied” murder was caught on security film footage played again and again.
It showed how a 40-strong gang from Tottenham and Haringey, out for revenge after an earlier clash in Enfield, cornered mechanical engineering student Mahir at a bus stop near Barclays Bank in Camden High Street.
“They were armed with knives looted from a nearby Sainsbury’s store, scaffold poles, beer bottles, lumps of wood, some with nails driven in, and screwdrivers. Mahir suffered more than 30 injuries including 17 stab wounds. He was two days short of his 19h birthday,” said prosecutor Brendan Finucane, QC.
Witnesses “saw feathers flying from gashes in his puffa jacket” and a Somali witness translated the gang’s chants as “kill him, kill him. Stab him dead. Stab him through the heart”.
Police told the court that the gang had a feud with a rival Somali group, known as the Centric Boys after their regular rendezvous in Centric Close, off Oval Road, Camden Town. Mahir Osman had an association with this group which led him to be singled out by the killers.
Speaking after the verdict, murder squad Det Chief Inspector Mick Broster said: “This group went to Camden with the sole intention of attacking anyone belonging to the opposing group. It was a premeditated attack using a level of violence I have rarely seen.”
A second trial of further suspects begins in June.
Trial has ‘riven’ the Somali community
“NO-one can be happy or jubilant; no-one can celebrate. This is a tragedy. One young life is finished; three more young boys will be in prison for a long time. It is a total loss of young lives.”
This was the sombre reaction to the conviction of Mahir Osman’s killers by one of the most active workers with Somali Youth in Camden.
Duran Farah, secretary of the Somali Youth Development Centre and organiser of Tawfiq, a Somali community association in King’s Cross, said yesterday that his community both in Camden and Haringey had been riven by the long investigation and trial which ended on Tuesday when three men were convicted of murder and five more were found guilty of violent crimes.
He said bitterness lingered among the parents of the convicted men because some members of the gang who had committed the killing had been spirited out of the country.
Others were unhappy because many of the conditions that led to the killing had not changed.
“I don’t think there has been much change in this. Still young people are around in the street because they haven’t anything to do. Still no-one is creating any opportunity for them. I’ve known every young person involved in this tragedy– most of these young boys came to the country when they were school age- 10 or 11– and most of them leave school without any qualifications.
“They are always vulnerable to the criminal world.” |
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