Beirut: A 17-year-old was sentenced to ten years in prison on Friday for fatally stabbing an Afghan refugee who was 18 and had travelled to the UK in search of "a safer life."
On October 12, 2021, Hazrat Wali was attacked at the Craneford Way Playing Fields in Twickenham, London, and sustained a 10 cm-deep knife wound. Hazrat Wali later passed away in the hospital, according to the BBC.
The teen attacker, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, was found not guilty of murder but was found guilty of the lesser offence of manslaughter by a jury at the Old Bailey. He admitted carrying a weapon during his trial, but claimed he had no intention of seriously harming Wali, a student and aspiring cricket player.
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The defendant had previously testified in Wimbledon magistrates' court and received a youth rehabilitation order there for carrying a knife in a shopping centre two months prior to the fatal attack.
Judge Sarah Plaschkes K.C. sentenced him on Friday, telling the murderer: "When you stabbed Hazrat he was unarmed and he was outnumbered by you and your friends."
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She continued, "You told the jury that you took the knife to the magistrates' court," and said that he had "deliberately decided to carry a fearsome weapon" that day. After the hearing was over, you collected it from some bushes outside.
The defendant allegedly attacked a McDonald's employee an hour after stabbing Wali, the court previously heard. He entered a guilty plea to assault causing actual bodily harm and affray in that case.
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Wali had travelled to London from Afghanistan in search of a "safer life," according to his older brother Mohammed Ashuk, who testified in court. The victim, who was 18 years old, was settling into his new life in the UK and had enrolled in a college programme with the intention of becoming an engineer.