Middle-east Arab News Opinion | Asharq Al-awsat

Murderer of Saudi PhD Student Sentenced to 27 Years in Prison | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
Select Page
Media ID: 55350107
Caption:

The Old Bailey (the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales) yesterday sentenced James Fairweather to 27 years in prison for murdering Saudi PHD student Nahid Almanea two years ago.

Nahid Almanea, a Saudi PhD student at the Colchester campus of the University of Essex, was killed while she was walking to university. She was found bleeding to death at about 10:40 on the morning of Tuesday the 17th June 2014 after being stabbed 16 times.

A British teenager admitted stabbing Almanea to death with a knife in January. He had previously killed a man in Colchester in an attack that raised fears at the time that the killer targeted his victims randomly. The teenager admitted killing Almanea and his first victim but denied their murder was calculated during the hearing at the Old Bailey.

Assistant Chief Constable Steve Worron, of the Kent and Essex Serious Crime Directorate, said: “The verdict will never heal the pain of losing their loved ones in such horrific circumstances. Hopefully they now have some answers and can be reassured that their killer will face a long time behind bars.”

Almanea came to Britain to study for a PhD two years ago, and was stabbed several times by British teenager Fairweather six months after she arrived in Colchester. He murdered her three months after murdering a Briton aged 33 years who is a father to 3 sons. The crime was the ugliest witnessed by Colchester, and Fairweather stabbed the man 102 times and left him covered in blood on the ground.