Khairi Saadallah, 26, shouted “Allahu akhbar” as he fatally stabbed friends James Furlong, 36, Dr David Wails, 49, and Joseph Ritchie-Bennett, 39, on June 20 last year. Three other people – Stephen Young, 51, Patrick Edwards, 29, and Nishit Nisudan, 34 – were also injured before Saadallah threw away the eight-inch knife and ran off, pursued by an off-duty police officer.
As he was detained, a Muslim member of the public told him: “You have nothing to do with Islam,” adding: “I am just livid.”
The failed Libyan asylum seeker had launched the attacks in Forbury Gardens, Reading, as the victims were enjoying a summer evening after the first lockdown restrictions in England were relaxed.
Saadallah, of Basingstoke Road, Reading, pleaded guilty to three murders and three attempted murders.
On Monday, Mr Justice Sweeney sentenced him at the Old Bailey to a whole-life order, saying it was a “rare and exceptional” case.
The judge said: “The two groups were each doing nothing more than sitting in gardens, a focal point of Reading since the 18th century.”
The victims were each killed with a single thrust of the knife with the attack lasting less than a minute.
Mr Justice Sweeney said: “His attack on them was so swift, ruthless and brutal that none of them had any chance to react, let alone to defend themselves.
“Using his combat experience in each of their cases the defendant targeted a vulnerable area where a single thrust of the knife would, as he intended, inevitably cause death.”
The judge said the defendant had done substantial planning.
He added: “During the course of the attack and afterwards and because he was seeking to advance a political, religious or ideological cause, the defendant was shouting in Arabic, ‘God is the greatest’ and ‘God accept my jihad’.”
More to follow…
