A migrant from Afghanistan has been sentenced to 24 years in prison in the UK after being found guilty of stabbing a fellow Afghanistan asylum seeker to death in 2017.
Jurors at the Old Bailey heard during sentencing on Thursday that Javid Ahmadzai, 26, had fatally stabbed the victim, Moosakhan Nasiri, known as Moosa, in the chest.
Jurors also heard that Ahmadzai had killed the victim in east London after being deported from the UK and returning illegally.
The incident happened on October 15, 2017 when Moosa was set upon by a group of fellow migrants from Afghanistan in Plashet Park, East Ham.
Prosecutor Lisa Wilding said the attack took place because the victim owed £10 for drugs, which he could not pay back immediately.
The Telegraph reported that after the killing, Ahmadzai fled to France, where in September 2018 he was convicted of stabbing a man in the chest during a row over the behavior and language of the group he was with at the time.
On the day of his release from French custody on June 21 last year, he was extradited back to the UK and arrested for murder.
On Thursday, Judge Mark Dennis told the court the defendant had first moved to the UK from Afghanistan to claim asylum as a teenager. “But he had been refused, and in due course he had been deported back to Afghanistan in 2015,” he said. “It was stated in evidence by him that he had re-entered the country illegally in early 2017.”
The judge said Ahmadzai had “multiple” previous convictions for violent or aggressive offenses between 2013 and 2014. He also said the use of a knife in the murder of Moosa “was a senseless and cowardly act against an unarmed and defenseless victim”.
