Triple-killer asylum seeker illegally got £40k of legal aid after stabbing Royal Marine
A TRIPLE-KILLER asylum seeker who posed as a schoolboy to enter the UK illegally received nearly £40,000 of taxpayers’ cash in legal aid after stabbing an aspiring Royal Marine to death.
Lawangeen Abdulrahimzai, 21, fatally knifed Thomas Roberts with a 10cm blade outside a Subway takeaway in Bournemouth, Dorset on March 12 last year.
The asylum seeker was convicted of murdering the 21-year-old at Salisbury Crown Court in Wiltshire on January 23.
And on January 25, he was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a minimum of 29 years, at the same court.
FOI data showes he got £39,776 in legal aid to protest his innocence at stabbing Thomas to death – despite being here illegally.
The cash was for a barrister at trial and solicitor at previous police interviews.
A source: “He was laughing in the face of justice.
“He killed two people before coming to Britain illegally, then kills another and gets a huge sum of taxpayers cash to defend himself.”
Abdulrahimzai was born in Afghanistan in 2001.
He started moving illegally through international borders at the age of 14 in 2015.
He initially entered Pakistan and Iran before moving between Norway, Italy and Serbia.
In 2018, the migrant used a Kalashnikov rifle to shoot dead two other Afghan men outside a refugee area near a petrol station.
He was handed a 20-year sentence in his absence for two counts of murder in Serbia.
A year later Abdulrahimzai made a claim for asylum in Norway but it was rejected.
In December 2019, he entered the UK illegally where he claimed asylum, pretending to be an unaccompanied 14-year-old whose parents had been killed by the Taliban.
He was put into foster care and moved to Poole in Dorset.
On March 12 last year, he got into a row with James Medway – a friend of Thomas Roberts – over an e-scooter.
Royal Marine hopeful Tom intervened in the argument and was stabbed in the heart and stomach by Abdulrahimzai.
When the asylum seeker was arrested on suspicion of murder, he claimed to to be 16-years-old, but dental examination revealed he was 21.
He admitted manslaughter, but denied murder.