Breitbart News reports that a jury deliberated for just 18 minutes Monday before finding a devout Islamic State supporter guilty of stabbing British Parliamentarian David Amess to death last year while he was meeting with voters at a church hall in eastern England.
Ali Harbi Ali, 26, was found guilty by London´s Central Criminal Court of murder and preparing terrorist acts. Ali, a London man with Somali heritage, had denied charges of murder and preparing acts of terrorism. He defended himself by saying Amess deserved to die because he voted for airstrikes on Syria in 2014 and 2015.
Opening the trial, prosecutor Tom Little said the case was “nothing less than an assassination” carried out because of a “warped and twisted and violent ideology. It was a murder carried out by that young man who for many years had been planning just such an attack and who was, and is, a committed, fanatical, radicalized Islamist terrorist.”
Little said Ali tricked his way into meeting Amess by pretending to be one of his constituents. The prosecutor also said Ali had researched and planned attacks on lawmakers and the Parliament building from at least 2019.