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Three men convicted of murdering five people in Leicester explosion Three men convicted of murdering five people in Leicester explosion
(about 1 hour later)
Three men have been found guilty of murdering five people in a shop explosion. Three men who deliberately started a fire at a Leicester shop that killed five people, including a mother and her two sons, after plotting to claim a £300,000 insurance payout have been convicted of murder.
Aram Kurd, Arkan Ali and Hawkar Hassan were convicted at Leicester crown court on Friday over the devastating blast at a Polish supermarket on Hinckley Road in Leicester on 25 February. Arkan Ali, 38, Hawkar Hassan, 33, and Aram Kurd, 34, used dozens of litres of petrol in an arson attack on the Polish supermarket, triggering a huge explosion which tore through the shop and destroyed the flat above it.
Kurd, Ali and Hassan showed little emotion as the verdicts were announced after the jury took just over 11 hours to unanimously convict them of murder. They left Viktorija Ijevleva, a 22-year-old shopworker, to die in the building because she was aware of the insurance policy, which had been taken out less than three weeks earlier, Leicester crown court heard during the five-week trial.
Three men appear in court over fatal Leicester explosion Ali, Hassanand Kurd were unanimously found guilty of five counts of murder on Friday after they had denied murder and alternative counts of manslaughter.
The first two defendants were also unanimously convicted of conspiracy to commit fraud, while Hassan was convicted of the offence by a majority 11-1 verdict. They were also convicted of conspiring with Ijevleva, who was Ali’s girlfriend, to make a gain, by dishonestly pursuing an insurance claim in respect of the fire.
The high court judge, Mr Justice Holgate, remanded all three men in custody until sentencing in mid-January. Ijevleva, Mary Ragoobeer, 46, her teenage sons Shane and Sean, as well as 18-year-old Leah Beth Reek, who was Shane’s girlfriend, were all killed in the blast on Sunday 25 February in Hinckley Road, Leicester.
More to follow. Leicester explosion: police name five missing people
Such was the ferocity of the blast, the court heard, some residents living nearby thought a bomb had hit the property.
In fact, about 26 litres of petrol had been used to start the fire in the supermarket’s basement, causing the explosion just after 7pm.
People were seen fleeing from a nearby takeaway moments after the explosion on CCTV and traffic camera footage released by the police after the trial. Rubble was also blasted into the roadway as cars passed.
Other footage recovered by police from a neighbouring business showed Ali in shot three days before the blast, moments before the angle of the camera was moved.
A day before the fire, other images from the same CCTV unit showed a gloved hand again moving the camera angle at a time when all the defendants were nearby. Meanwhile, a CCTV camera recorded Kurd escaping from the scene at the rear of the shop.
Ali, Hassan and Kurd, who were remanded in custody, will be sentenced later this month.
At the start of the trial, the prosecutor David Herbert told the jurythe trio had intended to maximise the damage to the shop and “would have known” people would have been in the two-storey flat above.
He said: “The explosion and the proceeding fire demolished a building and killed five people in the building – one person who was in the shop and four who were in the flat above enjoying a peaceful night in.”
He added: “Even on camera 50 metres away you can see the explosion and the enormity of what happened.
“It was an explosion, the prosecution say, caused by many, many litres of petrol.
“The explosion and the fire that followed was deliberately caused by these defendants who intended to profit from loss of stock, contents and future loss of business from the shop.
“It was not an accident, the prosecution say, that the petrol used caused such devastating damage.”
Describing the unlawful killing of Ms Ijevleva, Herbert added: “The defendants thought she knew too much and decided to leave her to die in the explosion that they created.
“In other words, the devastation that they caused was carried out with the intention to kill.”
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