Moroccan asylum seeker in UK says he stabbed stranger to death due to Gaza war

A Moroccan asylum seeker accused of stabbing a stranger to death told British police he carried out the attack because Israel had “killed children” in Gaza, prosecutors say during his trial today.

Ahmed Alid, 45, also allegedly attacked his housemate, a Christian convert, and assaulted two police officers, during the incidents in Hartlepool, northeast England, last October.

Prosecutors said he murdered 70-year-old Terence Carney after a chance meeting in the street when he was carrying two knives. He stabbed housemate, Javed Nouri, as he slept in bed. Alid shouted “Allahu Akbar” as he repeatedly wounded the sleeping Nouri in the chest, Teesside Crown Court hears at the start of the trial.

The 31-year-old survived the assault, but Carney died after being stabbed six times in the chest, abdomen and back. Police arrested Alid nearby with a bloody knife in his waistband, and he later told officers that he had acted because of the Gaza war, the court hears.

“He said he had wanted to kill them because of the conflict in Gaza and to further his desire that Palestine would be free from the Zionists, by which he meant Israel,” prosecutor Jonathan Sandiford says. “The defendant said he would have killed more people if he had been able to do so.”