LONDON: A teenager who armed himself with a kitchen knife and shouted “I’m going to f****** get you” after stabbing a 17-year-old boy in broad daylight over a drug debt has been jailed for life for his murder.
Armin Mehdikhani-Sarvejahani, 16, smiled as he was arrested for Mustafa Momand’s murder in central Brighton on October 5 2023. Lewes Crown Court heard on Thursday how Mustafa spent his dying moments running away in fear after he was knifed through the breast bone on Queens Road.
The A-level business and law student ran for 150 metres before he staggered and collapsed while his attacker yelled after him. Judge Mr Justice Constable KC said Mustafa was trying to turn his life around from being a “minor pawn in the terrible drug business which destroys so many lives”.
The trial heard how Mustafa had racked up a £20,000 shared drug debt and that his parents had tried to save him from drug dealing and debts, and even begged the police to send him to prison.
Sentencing Mehdikhani-Sarvejahani, Mr Justice Constable said: “(Mustafa Momand) was a brave young man who took the decision to try and leave the drug world behind him with his parents’ support, but this meant leaving this so-called unpaid debt.
“I have no doubt that you were tasked, as an expendable foot soldier, with inflicting lethal punishment on Mustafa.” He added: “This tragic case serves as a stark reminder of the very real dangers that await young people who get involved in dealing drugs, of the appalling way in which young lives spiral quickly into effective servitude for the financial benefit of others and become treated as expendable, and most clearly, of the devastating consequences of ever more frequent knife crime.”
The judge sentenced the defendant to a minimum of 17 years in prison for what he described as a planned and premeditated attack. In CCTV footage he is seen wearing a balaclava and putting a single glove on his right hand in the moments before stabbing Mustafa.The judge also said his evidence given during the trial that it was an accident was “untrue and cowardly”.