LONDON — A man who drove a van into worshipers near a London mosque, killing one man and injuring a dozen others, was sentenced on Friday to at least 43 years in prison for what a judge said was the result of “malevolent hatred.”
Judge Bobbie Cheema-Grubb said that mind of the driver, Darren Osborne, had been “poisoned” by far-right ideas before the June 2017 attack and that he had shown no signs of remorse.
“Your mind-set became one of malevolent hatred,” Judge Cheema-Grubb said. “This was a terrorist attack. You intended to kill.”
She sentenced Mr. Osborne, 48, to life with no chance of parole for 43 years, saying “the court has seen no evidence that the danger you present has lessened.”
Continue reading the main story“You attempted to kill at least a dozen people and succeeded in taking the life of a peaceful man you knew nothing about and had never met,” the judge said.
The sentencing came a day after a jury convicted Mr. Osborne of murder and attempted murder, after he drove a rented van into a crowd leaving Evening Prayer, in the Finsbury Park neighborhood of North London. Makram Ali, 51, was killed, and 12 others were injured.
Mr. Osborne had denied guilt and claimed that a man named Dave had been behind the wheel. Judge Cheema-Grubb said that jurors “saw through your pathetic, last-ditch attempt to deceive them by blaming someone else for your crimes.”
Prosecutors said Mr. Osborne was motivated by a hatred of Muslims and been radicalized by far-right and Islamophobic propaganda that he found online.
The police said his radicalization began when he watched a television program, based on real events, about Pakistani men sexually exploiting young women in northern England. Mr. Osborne began searching for racist and anti-Muslim material, and he carried out the attack a few weeks later, on June 19, weeks after Islamic extremists struck the Manchester Arena and London Bridge.
Bystanders who saw the van hitting pedestrians caught Mr. Osborne and restrained him until the police arrived. In her sentencing remarks, Judge Cheema-Grubb praised Mohammed Mahmoud, the imam of the local mosque, for intervening to prevent the crowd from attacking him.
“This was a demonstration of true leadership,” she said, adding, “He chose to respond to evil with good.”
Members of Mr. Ali’s family watched from the public gallery as the sentence was handed down. His daughter Ruzina Akhtar said in a statement that “his life was taken in a cruel way by a very narrow-minded, heartless being.”
“But we will choose to remember our father with happier thoughts,” she said outside the court. “He will never be forgotten; he will always stay in our hearts. His laughter will echo the walls of our home, his smile will be reflected in our eyes, his memories will be alive in our conversations.”
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