Saadallah loses appeal against whole-life sentence

Khairi Saadallah, the Reading terror attacker, has lost a bid to appeal his whole-life prison sentence, with judges at the Court of Appeal saying there was ‘no substance’ to the defendants arguments.

Sentencing him in January, a judge said it was a ‘rare and exceptional case in which just punishment requires that you must be kept in prison for the rest of your life’. The 26-year-old was told he would never be freed after murdering three people and injuring three more in a frenzied stabbing spree as they socialised in a park last year.

During the trial, the defence had argued that Saadallah should not receive a whole-life order, claiming that there was no extremist motivation and that his culpability was reduced by his mental health. The Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett, sitting with Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb and Mr Justice Henshaw, ruled that it was unsuccessful.

Detective Chief Superintendent Kath Barnes, the head of Counter Terrorism Policing South East, said she welcomed the decision. She called Saadallah ‘a committed jihadist’, who had bee intent on killing as many people and planned the attack in ‘meticulous detail’.