Man stabbed refugee after 'contact' with girlfriend, court told

JURY HEARS OF TEENAGER’S LAST MOMEN

- By SOPHIE CORCORAN

A HUDDERSFIELD man stabbed and killed a Syrian refugee after he made “minor contact” with his girlfriend, a court has heard.

Ahmad Mamdouh al Ibrahim, 16, had only been in Huddersfield for a matter of weeks when he was stabbed to death on April 3 this year in the town centre.

Alfie Franco, 20, is standing trial at Leeds Crown Court accused of his murder.

As he opened the trial to jurors at the court yesterday, prosecutor Richard Wright KC told how Ahmad had been in Huddersfield for a “couple of weeks,’ having been relocated after fleeing war-torn Syria.

He had enrolled at a college and was captured on CCTV meeting his friend in the town centre on the day of his death.

Mr Wright said: “A 16-year-old boy walked past a young woman and he may have made - at most - a minor contact with her. The boy was called Ahmad al Ibrahim. He was a refugee from the war in Syria, and he had been living in Huddersfield for no more than a couple of weeks.

“The young woman was the then-girlfriend of the defendant Alfie Franco.

‘Alfie Franco appears to have taken some petty exception to that perfectly innocuous passing in the street and he called the young Ahmad al Ibrahim back.

“And even as the boy started to walk towards him, Alfie Franco was reaching into his jogging bottoms and opening the blade on a flick knife that he was illegally carrying.

“He concealed the knife as he opened it, so that the boy didn’t appreciate the terrible danger he was in. Ahmad was unarmed and he offered no violence of any sort to Alfie Franco.

“Before Ahmad had even got very close to the defendant, Alfie Franco, with his knife gripped in his left hand, lunged forwards and drove the blade of his concealed flick knife straight into the boy's neck.