Darren Osborne, a 48-year-old British man was convicted last Thursday for his responsibility in the case of an attack on a London mosque. Osborne was found to have driven a van into a crowd of Muslim worshippers outside of the mosque, killing one individual and wounding another 9.
Osborne denied responsibility of the attack that occurred at the Finsbury Park Mosque in June of last year. He did however admit that he was hoping to kill the leader of the Labour party, Jeremy Corbyn, as well as Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London.
Following an 8 day trial in the Woolwich Crown Court, the jurors took only an hour to decide that Osbourne was guilty in the charges of murder and attempted murder.
The court examined evidence that suggested Osborne was very quickly radicalised by far-right ideology. Sarah Andrews, Osborne’s partner, said that he developed his Islamophobic views over the space of a few weeks prior to the attack.
Andrews said that Osborne seemed to have become very obsessed with Muslims in general. She said that he had consume a great deal of right-wing media and appeared to be “brainwashed”. Police searches of his property showed that he had use the internet to search for the EDL (English Defence League) which is a well-known anti-Muslim group.
There was also evidence that Osborne has received an automated message from the deputy leader of Britain First, Jayda Fransen. Britain First is another anti-Muslim group that posts inflammatory videos damning Islam, with some shared by Donald Trump last year.
As the trial came to its end, the court found the Osborne had deliberately driven his van into the crowd at the Finsbury Park Mosque, killing 51-year-old Markam Ali. Ali has apparently collapsed before the attack but onlookers said they saw that he was alive before the van hit him.
Osborne said that he was not the one driving the van, instead passing the blame to someone named “Dave” who had fled the scene. He did however admit to planning to attack a pro-Palestinian march which he thought Jeremy Corbyn would be attending.
Osborne said that if he had the chance to kill both Corbyn and Khan it would have been “like winning the lottery”. He referred to killing Corbyn as removing “another terrorist” from London’s streets.
The attack at the mosque followed Islamic terrorist attack in London earlier in 2017. These included a bomb detonating at an Ariana Grande show in Manchester arena that killed 22 as well as an attack on London Bridge that killed 8.