Jihadi killer who avoided deportation five times wins £107,000 in legal aid
A JIHADI who murdered three people after avoiding deportation five times cost £107,000 in legal aid.
Libyan refugee and former child soldier Khairi Saadallah, 26, fatally stabbed three men and left three more seriously injured during a park knife rampage last year.
He arrived in the UK in 2012 and already had convictions for violence, criminal damage and offensive weapons when granted asylum in 2018.
He was released from jail for other crimes just 15 days before his terrorist attack.
David Spencer, of the Centre for Crime Prevention, said: “It is wrong that a vast amount of taxpayers’ money should end up in pockets of lawyers defending a terrorist whose guilt was never in doubt.”
Figures released under freedom of information laws show Saadallah’s solicitors filed for £5,340 in taxpayer-funded legal aid just for representing him at police stations between 2015 and 2020.
Magistrates’ court appearances cost the public another £6,452. Crown court showings racked up another £94,219.
His lawyers also got £1,000 for a successful Court of Appeal case which saw him freed from jail 15 days before his murderous rampage in Reading in June 2020.
The drug user had been in prison for a series of violent crimes, but won his release.
He was given a whole-life sentence in January for murdering James Furlong, 36, David Wails, 49, and Joseph Ritchie-Bennett, 39.