|
|
 |
| |
SPECIAL
REPORT: He fled war-torn Somalia 14 years ago, only to see his
son cut down on the streets of Camden Town in the third knife
murder in a month
Mahir grew up with a lost Somali generation
dad
Mahir Osman |
MURDER victim Mahir Osman was a committed Muslim who grew
up amid a “lost generation” of Somali youths in Britain,
his devastated father has said.
Abdirahman Osman, who fled war-torn Mogadishu, Somalia, with
the then five-year-old Mahir in 1992, said his son was studying
mechanical engineering in Westminster and hoped to go on to
University. He visited the London Central Mosque every Friday,
he said.
Retired Mr Osman, part of a Somali forum which meets once a
month at the House of Commons and also a community health campaigner,
told the New Journal: “Mahir was a good boy, never in trouble
and he moved in with me when I divorced my wife to help me,
because I am getting old and am ill and need someone to help
me get in and of the bath and so on.
“He was always home by 11pm and he was waiting at the bus
stop to come home when they killed him – what can I say
about that?”
He added: “The young generation of Somalis here is lost
– I don’t know what you can do about it.”
He dismissed suggestions that tribal rivalries exacerbated by
the civil war in Somalia played a role in the attack, adding:
“The younger generation is not connected to that –
most of them do not even know about it.”
Mahir, a keen basketball player at Talacre Sports Centre in
Kentish Town, had attended Paddington Green School and enjoyed
playing Playstation games.
He was close to his three brothers and two sisters, most of
whom lived with his mother in Gilbey’s Yard, Chalk Farm,
and would have made the Haj to Mecca “like all Muslims,
if he had the opportunity”, Mr Osman said.
Pal Will Ayok said: “Mahir never got in an argument with
anyone.
“Everyone will remember him.”
Friends and relatives mourning Mahir at the Horn of Africa,
a popular Somali cafe in Kentish Town Road, all endorsed that
view.
A cousin, who did not want to be named, said: “He was good,
he was just a bystander who got caught in the crossfire.” |
| |
|
|
|
