A London jury reportedly found an Islamic State supporter guilty of murdering lawmaker Sir David Amess after just 18 minutes of deliberations.
Ali Harbi Ali, 26, was convicted of stabbing the 69-year-old Amess 20 times during a constituency surgery in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, in October 2021, the BBC reported. Ali denied the charges against him and said that he targeted Amess because of a 2014 vote for airstrikes in Syria, the outlet continued.
A court in London has found Ali Harbi Ali, an Islamic State supporter guilty of the murder of British MP David Amess, who was a devout Catholic. He was stabbed to death last October in Essex. pic.twitter.com/2axNPHFGBg
— Sachin Jose (@Sachinettiyil) April 11, 2022
Ali had spent years diligently researching and planning prospective lawmakers to attack and said that Amess deserved to die because of his decision to strike Syria, The Associated Press reported. The lead prosecutor in the case, Tom Little, said that Ali’s actions constituted “nothing less than an assassination,” carried out because of his “warped and twisted and violent ideology,” the outlet noted.
Amess died at the scene of the stabbing, leaving behind his wife and five children. “It was a murder carried out by that young man who for many years had been planning just such an attack and who was, and is, a committed, fanatical, radicalized Islamist terrorist,” Little told jurors, according to AP. (RELATED: Man Convicted Of Sex Trafficking After Living In Daughter’s College Dorm Room)
Jurors also heard that Ali had planned to kill cabinet minister Michael Gove and had planned to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State, the BBC noted. The travel was too difficult for Ali, so he stayed in the U.K. to “help Muslims” instead, the outlet reported. Ali further planned to martyr himself as he believed he would be shot by police following the fatal stabbing, according to the BBC.