Alfie Franco, 20, has been sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 23 years for the murder of 16-year-old Ahmad Al Ibrahim in Huddersfield town centre. Franco was found guilty by a jury at Leeds Crown Court on Thursday after deliberating for just over three hours.
The court heard that Franco stabbed Ahmad after taking “petty exception” to the teenager brushing past his girlfriend in the street. Ahmad, who had fled war-torn Homs in Syria, had been living in the West Yorkshire town for only a few weeks. Franco, who had consumed cannabis, cocaine, diazepam, ketamine and codeine, was seen on CCTV opening a flick knife and driving it into the boy's neck.
Sentencing Franco on Friday, Judge Howard Crowson said that upon seeing Ahmad, Franco “identified him as a target and lured him to within your range to strike before killing him”. The judge dismissed Franco's claim that he had seen a weapon in Ahmad's waistband as “a lie”. Franco pleaded guilty to possessing a knife in a public place.
In a victim impact statement read to the court, Ahmad's uncle Ghazwan Al Ibrahim said the teenager's father had suffered a heart attack upon hearing the news of his son's death and required surgery. The statement described Ahmad as having thought he had found “the land of peace and the fulfilment of dreams” in Britain, but instead was “cruelly taken away by the senseless and unprovoked act”.
Ahmad had travelled for three months to reach the UK from Syria, stopping at a refugee centre in Swansea, where he attended college, before moving to Huddersfield. He had aspired to become a doctor, in part to care for his mother, who suffered from a chronic medical condition.
