Saadallah pleaded guilty to three murders and three attempted murders in jihadist attack in June
A man who murdered three men in 10 seconds on a summer evening in a Reading park, has been sentenced to die in prison after a judge determined it was a jihadist attack.
Khairi Saadallah, 26, showed no emotion as the rare whole-life tariff was handed down by Mr Justice Sweeney for the “swift, ruthless and brutal” stabbings last June.
Continue reading...Engineering student Matthew Mason bludgeoned 15-year-old Alex Rodda to death with a wrench in Cheshire woods
A 19-year-old man has been found guilty of murdering a schoolboy after paying more than £2,000 to try to stop him revealing their sexual relationship.
Matthew Mason admitted bludgeoning 15-year-old Alex Rodda to death with a wrench in woods in Cheshire on 12 December 2019.
Continue reading...Criminal networks are depending on the chaos of Covid and Brexit. Now more than ever we need focus and international cooperation to prevent further tragedies
Trials in the UK of the drivers and haulage organisers involved in the Essex lorry tragedy in which 39 Vietnamese migrants perished ended in guilty pleas and convictions. Vietnam also convicted the agents who brokered the victims’ journeys to the UK and sentenced them to terms of imprisonment.
While these are positive developments in achieving some measure of justice for the victims, they won’t do anything to stem the smuggling and trafficking of Vietnamese migrants to the UK. No justice system has reached the actual masterminds and profiteers behind this horrific crime: the organised crime groups.
Continue reading...2020 led to surges in everything from domestic abuse to black markets in fake vaccines
By the end of March, one week into the UK’s first lockdown, recorded crime in Lancashire had dropped by a startling 40% compared with the four-year average.
“At first there was some mild panic,” says DCI Eric Halford, of Lancashire Constabulary. “Most senior officers expected a surge in demand.”
Continue reading...Supreme court upholds order against Zamira Hajiyeva, who spent £1m a year at Harrods
A woman who spent £1m a year at Harrods will be forced to give up her £15m home unless she reveals the source of her fortune following the UK’s first McMafia-style “dirty money” investigation.
Zamira Hajiyeva, the wife of a former boss of the Azerbaijani state bank jailed for fraud, has lost her final appeal against a court order forcing her to reveal how she came by so much money.
Continue reading...Experts voice concern over growth of ‘deviant’ videos, including foster-child abuse fantasies, on Pornhub and other mainstream sites
Groups working on the frontline in the fight against child abuse in the UK have warned that an increase in abuse-themed pornography is “normalising” child abuse.
Children’s charity Barnado’s said it is working with vulnerable children who are being put at risk by “deviant” pornography that fetishises fantasies of sex with children.
Continue reading...Cases of two men accused of trying to rob a police officer in 1972 are being referred to court of appeal
Two men who were jailed nearly 50 years ago on the word of a corrupt detective could finally have their names cleared.
The cases of two members of the so-called “Stockwell Six”, who were accused of attempting to rob that officer on the underground, are now being referred to the court of appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC).
Continue reading...When £2.5m of rare books were stolen in an audacious heist at Feltham in 2017, police wondered, what’s the story?
Everything went exactly to plan. Late on the evening of 29 January 2017, Daniel David and Victor Opariuc parked up and made their way towards the Frontier Forwarding customs warehouse in Feltham, less than a mile from Heathrow. After cutting a hole in the fence, the men made their way to the side of the building and scaled a wall to the roof. There, they cut through a skylight and lowered themselves on to shelving inside the building. The warehouse burglar alarms stayed silent; the men had carefully avoided tripping motion sensors positioned by the doors.
Once inside, with several lookouts posted around the surrounding industrial estate, the men took their time. Over the next five hours and 15 minutes, they broke padlocks off packing cases and placed items inside 16 large holdalls taken from inside the warehouse. The men escaped the same way they had entered: out through the skylight and back into the night.
Continue reading...Ambulance service unable to save teenager after attack in Newham
A 15-year-old boy has died after being stabbed in east London and a murder inquiry has been launched, the Metropolitan police has said.
Officers were called just before 7pm on Friday following reports of a stabbing in Woodman Street, near to the Royal Docks in Newham. Police and members of the London ambulance service (LAS) attended and found the teenager suffering injuries. Despite the efforts of the emergency services he was pronounced dead at the scene.
Continue reading...Changes intended to benefit innocent suspects kept some attackers at liberty until trial
Victims have been left unprotected and a suspected paedophile left free to strike after government changes to bail plunged parts of the criminal justice system into chaos, an official report has found.
The report from the police and prosecution inspectorates found damage was caused to the confidence of domestic abuse victims, whose alleged attackers were left free without restrictions while cases came to court.
Continue reading...David Fuller, 66, from East Sussex, will appear before Medway magistrates’ court on Saturday
A 66-year-old man has been charged with the murder of two women in Kent more than 30 years ago.
Police said David Fuller, from Heathfield, East Sussex, has been charged with two counts of murder in connection with the deaths of Wendy Knell and Caroline Pierce in 1987.
Continue reading...Appeal judges hear sentencing for Henry Long, 19, and two accomplices unduly lenient
The leader of the group of teenagers who killed PC Andrew Harper should have been given a life sentence rather than the 16 years he received, while his accomplices should also have their jail terms increased from 13 years each, a court has heard.
The attorney general argued that the sentences handed to Henry Long, 19, and the 18-year-olds Jessie Cole and Albert Bowers were all unduly lenient, during a court of appeal hearing on Monday.
Continue reading...Warning comes as man admits using Messenger to coerce children into sending explicit pictures
Police and a children’s charity have warned that a man who admitted 96 counts of child sexual abuse could have escaped justice if technology giants had already toughened their encryption.
David Wilson targeted young boys aged from four to 14, getting them to send compromising pictures and video. Some were so traumatised that they considered ending their lives.
Continue reading...Six people had been injured on Saturday night in Queen Street, in the city centre
Four teenagers were in custody on Sunday while police were granted special dispersal powers after a suspected stabbing attack in Cardiff city centre in which six people were injured.
Three people who suffered stab wounds remained at the University hospital of Wales, while another who suffered serious head injuries was at Llandough hospital in Penarth. Two people who suffered other injuries were discharged.
Continue reading...One woman is killed by a man every three days in the UK – a figure unchanged in a decade. A new census analyses this epidemic of male violence
In 2013, Sasha Marsden, a 16-year-old student, went to a Blackpool hotel for what she thought was an interview for a part-time cleaning job. The man she met, David Minto, 23, had lured her there on false pretences. He then sexually assaulted her and stabbed her 58 times. Sasha could only be identified by DNA taken from her toothbrush. Minto was sentenced to 35 years in prison, but for Sasha’s family, their grief has no time limit.
Gemma Aitchison, Sasha’s sister, set up YES Matters UK in response to the killing. “I wanted to know why this happened to Sasha and what I could do about it,” she explains. Part of what her organisation does is to talk to young people about consent, body image, pornography and media influence. “What I know now is that as long as women are treated as objects and not people, we will continue to be disposable.”
Continue reading...Online retailer is investigating a spate of pre-delivery thefts of newly released £450 console
Amazon has said it is investigating reports that brand new PlayStation 5 consoles have been stolen in transit, as customers have complained of missing deliveries, with bags of rice even delivered instead of the electronics.
Supply shortages have left the new games console even more desirable than its £450 price tag would suggest. But some shoppers waiting at home for the console to be delivered received an unwelcome surprise on Thursday and Friday, opening their parcels to find something other than the item they ordered.
Continue reading...Serial killer was serving 20 life terms for murder of 13 women across north of England in late 1970s
Peter Sutcliffe, the serial killer known as the Yorkshire Ripper, has died in hospital, a Prison Service spokesman said.
Sutcliffe, 74, was serving 20 life terms at Frankland prison in County Durham for murdering 13 women and attempting to kill seven more in the late 1970s.
Continue reading...Books worth more than £2.5m found in Romania after Mission Impossible-style theft
Hundreds of internationally important and irreplaceable books worth more than £2.5m that were stolen in a daring heist by abseiling burglars have been returned to their rightful owners.
Metropolitan police announced the successful conclusion on Tuesday of a near four-year police operation investigating the Mission Impossible-style theft of books that included rare works by Sir Isaac Newton, Galileo and the 18th-century Spanish painter Francisco de Goya.
Continue reading...Damning report says church put its reputation above the welfare of abuse victims
The Catholic church “betrayed” its moral purpose by prioritising its reputation over the welfare of children who had been sexually abused by priests, a damning inquiry report has concluded.
In its final review of the church, the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse (IICSA) was scathing in its criticism of the leadership of Cardinal Vincent Nichols and says the Vatican’s failure to cooperate with the investigation “passes understanding”.
Continue reading...This docuseries could have asked bigger questions on domestic violence, or the murder of Pistorius’s scarcely mentioned girlfriend. Instead, it is a flawed, fawning hagiography
The BBC provoked an outcry last month when it ran a two-minute trailer for this four-part documentary series (BBC Two and BBC iPlayer) that referred to “an international hero who inspired millions” who had “suddenly found himself at the centre of a murder investigation”, without once mentioning the name of the woman Pistorius killed: Reeva Steenkamp. If you did not know the story, you would probably have thought you were about to watch a re-examination of a murder investigation gone wrong and the righting of a terrible miscarriage of justice. The BBC eventually apologised and replaced the advert with something they said was more representative of the tone of the film.
They should just have left it. It was a meretricious trailer for a meretricious film by a director – Daniel Gordon – who, in one of the press interviews for the series, said he was “still flip-flopping” on the matter of Pistorius’s guilt.
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