Darren Osborne has been found guilty of carrying out the Finsbury Park attack in which he drove a van into worshippers near a mosque in Finsbury Park, killing one
Finsbury Park attacker Darren Osborne has been convicted of driving his van into a group of Muslim worshippers after a jury rejected his claims ‘a man called Dave’ carried out the attack.
The unemployed father-of-four from Cardiff faces a life sentence tomorrow after he was convicted of murder and attempted murder today following just one hour of jury deliberation.
Osborne had obsessively scoured the internet looking for far-right material after watching a BBC drama about Asian grooming gangs in Rochdale.
Just a few weeks after consuming anti-Muslim material online, he drove to London intent on killing as many people as possible at the pro-Palestinian Al Quds march on June 18 last year.
But when he could not get his hired box van near the march route, he desperately drove around the capital looking for a mosque or Islamic centre to target.
He spotted a crowd gathered around Makram Ali, who had collapsed near Finsbury Park’s Muslim Welfare House, and ploughed into them, killing Mr Ali and leaving 12 others with serious injuries.
The 48-year-old, who hasn’t worked for 10 years, was arrested at the scene after a local imam calmed an angry crowd.
Police found a rambling letter Osborne had written in the van in which criticised Jeremy Corbyn, Lily Allen and Sadiq Khan over their responses to Islamist terror attacks and Asian sex gangs.
CCTV showed the moment the van ploughed into the group (left), who were tending an injured man on the floor. Police bodycam footage showed Osborne in a police van after the attack
Osborne had not been on the radar of anti-terror police and officers believe he ‘self-radicalised’ in less than four weeks after watching BBC drama Three Girls, about Asian grooming gangs in Rochdale.
Months after the attack, and a week into his trial, Osborne suddenly claimed in court that he had planned the attack with two men, ‘Terry and Dave’, with ‘Dave’ having been behind the wheel when the attack was carried out.
He claimed ‘Dave’ was ‘like a magician’ and disappeared into the night after carrying out the attack.
But CCTV footage showed only Osborne getting out of the van and police found no trace of either of his supposed accomplices and detectives described Osborne as a ‘lone attacker’.
Osborne had received messages from former English Defence League leader Tommy Robinson and a message on Twitter from Britain First deputy Jayda Fransen.
The content of Fransen’s message was not revealed in court and police have refused to say whether Twitter would hand it over to them during the investigation.
The case will add to concerns about the amount of extremist material being shared online and the reluctance of social media giants to tackle it.
Osborne crashed the van into bollards at the end of the road where he carried out the attack
The Met’s Counter Terrorism Commander Dean Haydon said: ‘Internet companies have to respect freedom of speech and as a result do not take some material down and we have to be alive to the fact that people are using this material to self-radicalise and that’s what’s happened in this case.
‘My view is that internet companies could do more towards taking that material down themselves.
‘We work closely with them and when we do pinpoint certain material, of a more violent, extremist nature, they do cooperate and take it down.’
Grandfather Makram Ali, 51, died yards from his home when the van mounted the curb
The attack could have potentially had a much higher death toll had Osborne hit his original target, the pro-Palestinian Al Quds march which attracted hundreds.
Road closures meant he couldn’t get near enough to the march to launch his attack and instead he drove around London looking for another Islamic target.
Osborne claimed in court that he had also hoped to kill Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and London mayor Sadiq Khan.
Police have said there was no serious threat to either man, although both have been kept informed of the investigation and trial.
Commander Haydon said: ‘My view of Osborne is that he is a troubled, vile and hate-filled individual and, if you look back over 30 years, he has a history of violence, a history of alcohol abuse, drug abuse and depression.’
Police say far-right extremism is a ’emerging threat’, although just 30% of the terrorism they deal with is ‘domestic’, the category under which they classify such cases.
How Finsbury Park killer went from jobless drunk living in a tent to fanatical far-Right obsessive in less than FOUR WEEKS after watching BBC drama on Rochdale abuse
The case of Finsbury Park attacker Darren Osborne has shocked police due to the speed at which he went from being a unemployed painter-decorator with no strong political views to a far-right fanatic plotting to kill as many people as possible.
His extremist views were ignited after he watched a BBC drama about the Rochdale grooming scandal. It was aired at a time when his life was falling apart as he split with his partner and spiralled into heavy drinking and rough sleeping.
Just one month to the day after last of the three-part TV series was broadcast, the 48-year-old was driving around London in a hired box van, looking for a group of Muslims to run over.
Osborne, pictured in a court sketch, quickly became obsessed with far-right material online
The father-of-four was born in Singapore but raised by his parents John and Christine in the seaside town of Weston-Super-Mare, Somerset. He tried to steal from his own grandfather aged 10 and later became known as an unpredictable troublemaker.
Speaking after the attack, his sister Nicola said: ‘Weston is a small town. Everyone knows Darren. I’ve lost jobs, boyfriends after people found out I am Darren Osborne’s sister.’
He drank heavily, took drugs and got into fights, previously serving a two year sentence for assault.
A pub barmaid said he once he grabbed her by the throat and pinned her to the wall and locals claimed he once beat up a tourist using a belt buckle.
Osborne on CCTV at a pub in Cardiff where he wrote his hate-filled letter before the attack
Locals knew him as ‘Mr Moody’. One said he was ‘often drunk and cuckoo’.
Another called him ‘loud and aggressive’, adding: ‘He was always shouting the odds if anyone disagrees with him.’
But Osborne was never political until the breakdown of his relationship with pub chef Sarah Andrews in his mid-40s. They had moved to Cardiff several years before.
He began going off the rails at the start of summer last year and is said to have thrown himself into a river in Cardiff in an apparent suicide bid and asked to be sectioned.
His partner didn’t want him in the house and he began sleeping in a tent and was seen buying bags laden with alcohol from a local Aldi.
His conversion was so quick that those who had not seen him in the three weeks before his attack couldn’t believe his actions.
‘He wouldn’t even know who the Prime Minister is,’ his sister Nicola said soon after the incident. ‘I’ve never heard him say anything about Muslims or anything racist.’
But unbeknown to many who knew him, Osborne had become an internet obsessive, scouring the web for far-Right and anti-Muslim material after watching Three Girls in May last year.
The court heard he became consumed by anti-Muslim hatred after watching the BBC documentary Three Girls, about Asian grooming gangs in Rochdale
Osborne was sleeping in a tent in this woodland in Cardiff as his life spiralled out of control
His estranged partner Ms Andrews told police: ‘Three to four weeks before the incident we watched a program called Three Girls about young girls being sexually exploited by Muslim men.
‘That caused Darren to go onto the internet to research further. We may have watched a couple of those episodes back to back on catch-up.
She said he was soon ‘non stop’ on the internet, obsessively going over the perverse catalogue of extremist material it had to offer.
Ms Andrews added: ‘He started watching Tommy Robinson stuff on the internet. He had been reading Tommy Robinson posts on Twitter.
‘I think he was a ticking time bomb. I should have realised what was going on’.
Muslim neighbours also noticed a difference in him.
Whereas he had previously been polite and helped them with DIY, a few days before the attack he called a neighbour’s 12-year-old son an ‘in-bred’.
Osborne, who police said was far from ‘tech savvy’ before watching Three Girls, set up a Twitter account and started following Britain First deputy Jayda Fransen, who this year gained notoriety when Donald Trump retweeted her anti-Muslim posts.
But it was the speed at which Osborne went from reading far-right posts to plotting a terrorist attack, which surprised detectives at Scotland Yard.
The Met’s Counter Terrorism Commander Dean Haydon: ‘It is clear that in the space of only a few weeks, Osborne developed a warped and twisted view to such a degree that he was prepared to plan and carry out this attack.’
A scrawled letter in a Cardiff pub, then a drive to London to maim and kill: CCTV reveals Osborne’s movements in the lead-up to the attack
After forming the idea of attacking a group of Muslims, Darren Osborne moved quickly to put his murderous plan into action.
He hired the Luton van he used in the attack on Saturday, June 17, last year before drinking half a bottle of vodka at his home in Pentwyn, Cardiff.
He then went to a local pub to compose a letter to ‘Theresa May and Parliament’.
Asking staff for a pen and paper, he wrote the letter police later found in the van.
Osborne was seen writing a hate-filled letter in a Cardiff pub the day before the attack
He was eventually thrown out of the pub after allegedly saying ‘all Muslims are terrorists’ and telling a soldier: ‘All your family will be Muslims soon.’
When he was challenged, he is said to have replied: ‘I’m going to kill all the Muslims. I am going to take it into my own hands.’
The next morning he drove the van to London to target a march organised by the Islamic Human Rights Commission, but was thwarted by road closures.
Instead, he drove around London, stopping in Lewisham to find out if there was mosque there, but moving on after looking at the borough’s Islamic Centre.
He arrived at Finsbury Park just before 11.30pm after asking residents for its exact location.
He parked his van and walked around the area in an apparent bid to work out where worshippers were likely to come from and congregate.
He then ran over Makram Ali, 51, who had a heart condition and was already lying on the ground having collapsed just after Ramadan prayers.
He then went to a local car hire company and hired a large box van. He was captured on CCTV
He drove the van from Cardiff to London, where he intended to target a pro-Palestine march
Worshippers tending to Mr Ali were also struck after the van allegedly accelerated hard and swung off the road into them before crashing into bollards.
Mr Ali was left with a tyre mark across his chest and died from horrific injuries.
Others who were lucky to survive included Ibrahim Benaouda, 23, whose ribs, spine and pelvis were broken, while worshipper Hamdi Alfaiq, 38, had to be dragged from under the van.
Mohammed Geedi, 28, said he saw and heard the white van speeding up and the noise of gears changing as it turned into Whadcoat Street, while other witnesses reported hearing the engine being revved.
Mr Geedi was hit on the left arm by the heavy Luton box van’s wing mirror and knocked backwards into an older woman.
Describing the scene after the impact, Mr Geedi said: ‘I looked at a lot of people just splattered all over the place.’
After being unable to get the march, he drove to Lewisham to see if he could find a mosque
Abandoning Lewisham, he then drove to Finsbury Park, where he ploughed in worshippers
Of the victim, he said: ‘He was reciting something and he had a little blood on the top of his head – a tiny bit. I could see the movement from his lips.’
Adnan Mohamud, 28, said Osborne was smiling as he told him: ‘I’ve done my job, you can kill me now.’
Osborne was arrested when onlookers flagged down a police car, and is said to have told officers: ‘Our great-great-grandchildren won’t stand a chance, someone has to rise up.
‘Every Tom, Dick and Harry over here… well, a few off tonight, a few less.’
What did Darren Osborne write in his ‘hate letter’?
Below is a transcript of the letter written by Darren Osborne, read out in court by Jonathan Rees QC:
‘Why are their terrorists on our streets today? Weve had 3 Recent terror attacks, our children splattered against the walls of concerts, part n parcel by all accounts, Mr Sadiq Khan, no it isn’t how you can let this happen, terrorists marching through our capital city, you’re a disgrace where was the public outrage after 1400 of our white british none muslim girls?
‘Where were you in Rotherham Lily allen Jeremy Corby nowhere to be seen, Just thinking about how many more inbred migrants you can bring into the country, the local harbour map of Rotherham mr Hussain wrote of character Reference For one of the rapists in court, really now, hang on a minute am I missing something here, where was you all, Jez & lil?
The letter was found in the box van Osborne hired to carry out his shocking attack
‘Don’t you fancy getting involved in that the only protest within the muslim community were when taxi drivers were asked to put cctv in their cars, seriously your taking the piss, mr Hussain has been promoted.
‘Don’t people get it, this is happening up and down our Green and pleasant land, Ferrel inbred raping muslim men hunting in packs preying on our children, this will be coming to a town near you soon, it most probably has, get back to the desert, you raping inbred bastards & climb back on ya camels. people don’t be swayed by corbyn & his Free packed lunch, & uni fees think of your childrens future, islams ideology doesn’t belong here & neither does Sharia law.
‘So mr Sadiq Khan how are you this morning?
‘I’d imagine your gonna have a hard job keeping your happy go lucky vibrant city in order, Part n parcel of living in a big city, carry on as normal, bk to ya day Jobs, what about you Jez?
‘Mr terrorist sympathiser, or should I call you harold, ‘you dirty old man’ put that in ya pipe, & have some sympathy for me, well Folkes gotta go busy day today.
‘Remember peaceful vigils only & please dont look back in anger, God Save the Queen.’