
Kent: Inmate who attacked staff with self-made weapons sentenced
The court heard on 23 September 2022, Rahman was detained in the high-security segregation unit at HMP Swaleside over concerns he was trying to "radicalise other inmates to extreme versions of Islam".While he was escorted to a shower, he punched one officer and stabbed another in the forehead with a pen.He then punched a third officer in the stomach and stamped on the foot of a fourth after they went to assist their colleagues.During an attempt to retrieve a self-made weapon, Rahman tried to stab an officer in the neck, jurors had heard.After he was moved to Belmarsh prison, he attempted to kill three prison officers on 23 October 2022.He stabbed one of them in the head and neck, and cut two more officers' necks while they were trying to restrain him, the court heard.
'Inflicting serious injury'
When ordered to open his hand, Rahman was seen holding the bottom of a plastic spoon that had been sharpened, the court heard.In January, a jury found him guilty of four counts of attempted murder.Rahman also admitted a charge of attempted wounding, six attempted assaults on emergency workers and three charges of possessing sharpened pieces of plastic in prison.The judge said: "Rahman is an extremely dangerous offender who has demonstrated a willingness to use unlawful drugs, notwithstanding his clear knowledge that such abuse makes him likely to assault prison officers in particular and other persons."The court heard his attacks were "planned" and he found a piece of plastic, which he spent "considerable time" sharpening into a weapon to "inflict serious injury".
At the time of the offences in 2022, Rahman was serving a life sentence for three earlier attempted murders and wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, jurors heard.In the summer of 2017, he attacked one inmate and two officers at HMP Wayland in Norfolk, HMP Lincoln and HMP Wakefield, using improvised weapons to stab at his victims' heads and necks.Rahman had originally been jailed two years previously, in November 2015, and ordered to serve six years and four months for drug offences.He had pleaded guilty at Ipswich Crown Court to two charges of possessing class A drugs heroin and cocaine with intent to supply and one charge of being concerned in the supply of heroin.His condition is currently stable and he is taking his medication.

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North Wales Live
13 hours ago
- North Wales Live
Meat that wasn't what was promised sold to restaurants across Wales
A defendant sold what he claimed was halal meat to Indian restaurants and takeaways but it wasn't. Helim Miah, 46, has been jailed for over four years after an investigation also revealed "extremely poor food hygiene conditions". Today Merthyr Tydfil Crown Court heard that Miah and co-defendant Noaf Rahman, 46, sold halal-labelled chicken from their wholesale food business but investigations later revealed their suppliers did not provide halal meat. The pair continued to falsely advertise and sell the chicken as halal to customers. The court heard Cardiff and the Vale Shared Regulatory Services seized 2,840 kilograms of frozen meat from Universal Foods (Wholesale) Ltd, based at Bessemer Close, Cardiff, in January, 2019, reports WalesOnline. You can sign up for all the latest court stories here An investigation revealed a string of food hygiene issues. These included very poor food hygiene practices, evidence that some poultry had been defrosted and refrozen, chicken two years past its sell-by date, no evidence of temperature records, evidence of pest activity and transportation of unmarked meat in unclean vehicles which weren't refrigerated or fit for purpose. Rahman pleaded guilty to multiple food hygiene offences but Miah pleaded not guilty and stood trial at Merthyr Crown Court in April this year. He denied any involvement in the day-to-day processing of the business but was found guilty of 10 charges including running a food business dishonestly - falsely selling non-Halal meat as Halal, mislabelling expiry dates, ignoring hygiene rules, and failing to track food origins - putting public health and trust at risk. Judge Vanessa Francis sentenced Miah, of Kilcredaun House, Cardiff, to 56 months in prison. His co-defendant, Rahman, of Eddystone Close, Cardiff, was sentenced to a 24-month suspended sentence. Cllr Norma Mackie, cabinet member responsible for Shared Regulatory Services at Cardiff Council, said: "This story will be deeply concerning to our Muslim community. Eating halal is a requirement in the Islamic religion, and to take part in such a fraud shows the complete disregard these men had for the community." She added: "The investigation revealed extremely poor food hygiene conditions that could have caused serious harm to their customers. This case raises important questions about how food suppliers are held accountable for the accuracy of their halal claims, the need for greater consumer awareness, and the importance of verifying the authenticity of halal certifications. She added: "If anyone has concerns about the traceability of the food products they are buying from a wholesaler, please contact Shared Regulatory Services on 0300 123 6696."


The Guardian
a day ago
- The Guardian
One Day in Southport review – a sombre portrait of how a tragedy was hijacked
Most of the six to 10-year-old girls gathered in the Hart Space dance studio in Southport, Merseyside, on 29 July last year for a Taylor Swift-themed workshop were making friendship bracelets ('It's a very Swiftie thing to do,' says the older sister of one, who was watching them), when 17-year-old Axel Rudakubana burst in with a knife. His attack left two children dead at the scene and another died the next day from her injuries. Six other children, including the sister who was watching, and two adults were injured and taken to hospital. One Day in Southport focuses largely on what happened afterwards interspersed with the memories of the injured older girl and her family, because what happened next was the result of so many social, cultural and political issues that you could spend a lifetime unpacking them. This documentary does the best it can in an hour. It interviews people from different sides of the various debates, and shows social media posts and footage from the riots that sprang up around the country and caught the police and the establishment unawares. The prime minister was left floundering and unable to address the mixture of feelings and motivations behind them quickly or directly enough. The attacker – his name then kept from the public – was quickly arrested. The police held a press conference and described him as a 17-year-old from Lancashire and originally from Cardiff. The latter detail was included to attempt to tamp down the speculation already rife online and in the local area (arising because the one thing witnesses to the attack did know about the stranger was that he was Black) that he was an immigrant, which quickly became an illegal immigrant, which quickly became a Muslim illegal immigrant and ignited all sorts of rage. The usual suspects from the manosphere and others with their own agendas to push then stoked the fires, including Nigel Farage ('It shows how unhappy people are with the state of law and order in this country … Your children don't matter to them, they don't care') and Tommy Robinson, the leader of the far-right anti-Islam English Defence League. The hour tracks the evolution of local grief and anger directed at a specific event into widespread violence and unrest. One of the many YouTubers and other people outside the mainstream media who recorded events is Wesley Winter. He began feeling at one with the righteous fury felt by others. By the time he was filming a few days later in Middlesbrough, he realised that the people walking along a residential street in a Muslim area of the town and smashing windows 'was a very different crowd' and he became frightened that they might turn on him next. A call from his wife trapped in her car as people smashed the windows of vehicles around her led them to leave the area as quickly as possible. His naivete is astonishing, but more admirable than the craven avoidance of those supposedly charged with leading the nation in times of strife to address the difficult, sensitive issues with which the tinderbox had been – and remains – stuffed. Because what have we here? We have a section of the population, that's suffering greatly under the cost of living crisis. This fact has receded from the headlines, but not from life – the housing crisis, the proliferating brutal effects of austerity that the current government seems to be doing nothing to alleviate, and much more. We have people who see the advent of more people to these isles as competition for increasingly scarce resources. Even the co-convener of Stand Up to Racism, Weyman Bennett, makes the point that 'people are protesting against something that is really happening to them … they are rightfully angry' before explaining how this is leveraged and exploited by far-rightwingers (and whatever Reform are pretending to be) so that 'they're blaming the wrong people'. The absence of anyone in authority addressing this, instead of lauding the arrests and sentencing of rioters, was and remains conspicuous. Why not publicly delineate the difference between legitimate concerns and far-right agitation – bring the worried into your fold and denounce those burning mosques and terrifying the asylum seekers in besieged hotels? Because there is a difference and it matters hugely. The documentary gives no facts or figures about immigration, costs or anything else apart from the number of arrests and the 1,000 years-plus total to which rioters were sentenced. It is essentially a mood piece, tracking the development of the hijacking of grief to violent ends and leaving us to draw our own conclusions about where, why and if we would have stepped back to say: 'This has gone too far.' One Day in Southport is on Channel 4 now.


Powys County Times
18-07-2025
- Powys County Times
Man who went to Syria guilty of joining al Qaida-linked group
A man has been found guilty of travelling to Syria to fight with a terrorist group linked to al Qaida for jihad. Isa Giga, 32, resigned from his job as a technical support consultant job at a technology firm and bought a business class return flight to Turkey before crossing into wartorn Syria in August 2015. Despite pleas from his family, Giga did not return to the UK for nine years and was arrested upon his arrival on a flight from Turkey last May. Following a trial at the Old Bailey, he was found guilty of preparation of terrorist acts between August 31 2015 and August 31 2016 by travelling to Syria to fight with the Jaysh Al Fath groups. The court heard how Giga had left the home he shared with his parents and sister in Hounslow, west London, in August 2015 and informed them he had gone to Syria for jihad. On September 11 2015 – the anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks in the United States – he told his sister: 'I have come here to fight for jihad. I'm based in Idlib province and I fight for Jaysh al Fath which is the rebel coalition which includes the Free Syrian Army up to al Qaida-linked groups. 'I have come here to fight against (Bashar) Assad and also to fight against Isis. I can't sit at home when fellow Muslims are in need and their religion is in danger.' His father responded: 'Please don't do anything that will break my or your mother's or family's heart, stay within the bounds of true Islam and humanity, stay away from extremism and follow the Sunnah.' But in a further message to his sister, Giga said he had finished his training and had been given the 'opportunity to fight on the front line in the near future'. He told her: 'I hope more than anything to gain martyrdom while fighting against Isis or against the Assad regime but I fear death as much as anyone else so I am in need of your duas (prayers).' The court heard that Giga's father did everything he could to try to convince his son to return home and travelled to Reyhanli, a small Turkish town close to the Syrian border. In a letter to Giga from the border, he wrote: 'I have promısed your mum that somehow I will try my best to convince you to come out of there, and we will settle down anywhere in this world where you feel comfortable and happy… 'Can you for one minute imagine what the rest of her life will be like if something was to happen to you? Isa, her life wıll be destroyed and so will all of ours. 'It is on that basis I beg you to stay safe and come out of there immediately. And stay away from the front line because the Russians are using all kınds of firepower.' However, Giga appeared to be set on 'martyrdom', the court heard. Then in December 2015, Giga told his sister that he planned on doing charity work – although the organisation concerned had no record of it – and by August 2016 contact with his family petered out. Eight years later, Giga was issued an emergency passport by the British Consulate in Istanbul. Police were waiting when Giga arrived at Heathrow Airport on a Turkish Airlines flight on May 23 2024. Following his arrest, Giga made no comment in police interviews but in a prepared statement denied he had travelled to Syria to fight or join any groups. He claimed he had lied to his family about doing charity work, training, fighting and joining groups because he thought they would struggle to understand the idea of going there simply to live. Giving evidence in his Old Bailey trial, Giga maintained that he had gone to Syria only to live in an Islamic state. A jury deliberated for 10 hours and 26 minutes to reject his version of events and find him guilty by a majority of 11 to one. Judge Mark Lucraft KC ordered a report and adjourned sentencing to October 17. Commander Dominic Murphy, head of the Met's Counter Terrorism Command, said: 'We have been clear for some time now that anyone returning to the UK suspected of being involved in any terrorist-related activity overseas will be thoroughly investigated. 'We work very closely with other partners and agencies here in the UK and overseas in order to do this and help keep the public safe.