(NewsGlobal.com)- On Monday, an ISIS supporter who stabbed a British lawmaker to death last fall was found guilty by a London jury after only 18 minutes of deliberations.
Ali Harbi Ali, a fervent supporter of the Islamic State, was found guilty of murder and preparing terrorist acts in London’s Central Criminal Court for stabbing lawmaker David Amess to death while Amess was meeting with voters at a church hall in Leigh-on-the-Sea, Essex in October 2021.
It was reported that Ali had been radicalized in 2014 while he was participating in an anti-radicalization scheme called Prevent. According to the UK Guardian, in 2015, while Ali was becoming an adherent of terrorism, Prevent determined that he did not pose a significant danger and his case was closed.
In October, Ali took a train from London to Essex and booked an appointment to meet with Amess during his constituency meeting at the church, claiming he had recently moved to Essex. Once in the room, Ali took a call, said he was sorry, then stood up and pulled the knife from his pocket.
Amess, a member of Parliament since 1983, was stabbed 21 times in the frenzied attack and died before paramedics could get him to the hospital.
Ali defended his actions, arguing that Amess deserved to die for voting in favor of airstrikes in Syria in 2014 and 2015.
In the trial, prosecutor Tom Little described Ali’s actions as “nothing less than an assassination” carried out because of a “warped and twisted and violent ideology” by a “committed, fanatical, radicalized Islamic terrorist.”
The prosecution also said Ali had researched and planned additional attacks on lawmakers and the Parliament from at least 2019, including making reconnaissance trips to the work and home addresses of two other members of Parliament as well as Cabinet member Michael Gove.
Ali is scheduled to be sentenced on Wednesday where the crown may ask the court to impose a “whole-life tariff,” meaning a life sentence with no chance of parole.
David Amess was the second member of Parliament to be murdered by a terrorist in recent years. In 2016, a right-wing extremist assassinated the Labor MP, Jo Cox.
