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A person has been sentenced to life with a minimum term of 23 years for the killing of a young Syrian refugee after the victim passed his companion in the center of Huddersfield.

Court Learns Particulars of Fatal Confrontation

A Leeds courtroom was told how Alfie Franco, 20, attacked with a knife Ahmad Al Ibrahim, sixteen, shortly after the young man brushed past Franco’s girlfriend. He was declared guilty of the killing on last Thursday.

The teenager, who had left battle-scarred the city of Homs after being hurt in a blast, had been residing in the Huddersfield area for only a few weeks when he met his attacker, who had been for a meeting at the job center that day and was going to buy cosmetic adhesive with his girlfriend.

Details of the Attack

The trial was informed that the accused – who had consumed marijuana, cocaine, diazepam, an anesthetic and codeine – took “a trivial issue” to the teenager “harmlessly” walking past his partner in the public space.

Security camera video displayed the man making a remark to Ahmad, and gesturing him closer after a short verbal altercation. As the youth walked over, Franco opened the blade on a folding knife he was holding in his pants and plunged it into the teenager's throat.

Verdict and Judgment

The defendant refuted the murder charge, but was found guilty by a trial jury who deliberated for just over three hours. He pleaded guilty to having a knife in a public place.

While delivering the judgment on Friday, the court judge said that upon spotting the teenager, the man “marked him as a victim and lured him to within your proximity to attack before ending his life”. He said his statement to have seen a weapon in Ahmad’s waistband was “a lie”.

Crowson said of the victim that “it is a testament to the medical personnel working to keep him alive and his determination to live he even made it to the hospital alive, but in reality his trauma were unsurvivable”.

Family Reaction and Message

Presenting a message drafted by the victim's uncle the family member, with help from his family, the prosecutor told the judges that the victim's parent had had a heart episode upon being informed of his son’s death, causing him to require surgery.

“It is hard to express the impact of their heinous crime and the influence it had over the whole family,” the message stated. “The boy's mom still cries over his belongings as they smell of him.”

The uncle, who said the boy was dear to him and he felt ashamed he could not keep him safe, went on to state that the victim had thought he had found “a peaceful country and the fulfilment of dreams” in Britain, but instead was “brutally snatched by the pointless and random violence”.

“Being his relative, I will always carry the guilt that Ahmad had traveled to England, and I could not keep him safe,” he said in a message after the judgment. “Our beloved boy we love you, we yearn for you and we will feel this way eternally.”

History of the Victim

The court learned Ahmad had travelled for a quarter of a year to get to England from Syria, visiting a asylum seeker facility for youths in a city in Wales and going to school in the local college before arriving in his final destination. The young man had hoped to work as a physician, motivated partly by a desire to support his parent, who suffered from a persistent condition.