By The Guardian (World News) | Created at 2024-10-25 14:25:13 | Updated at 2024-10-25 16:31:57
2 hours ago
A Nazi-obsessed extremist who stabbed an asylum seeker in the chest and said he was “exterminating the invasive species” in a “terrorist manifesto” has been found guilty of attempted murder.
Callum Parslow, who has Adolf Hitler’s signature tattooed on his left arm, repeatedly stabbed Nahom Hagos, 25, in the attack at a hotel previously used to house asylum seekers in Worcestershire.
In a post he tried to publish on X after the attack, he said he had “done his duty to England” and had “exterminated the harmful, invasive species”. He tried to tag Tommy Robinson in the post, as well as prominent politicians such as Keir Starmer, Rishi Sunak, Nigel Farage and Suella Braverman.
After a three-week trial at Leicester crown court, which could not be reported until a court order was lifted on Friday, Parslow, 32, was found guilty of attempted murder, after previously admitting a charge of wounding.
CCTV footage showed that on 2 April this year, Parslow travelled from his home in Worcester to a nearby country hotel, The Pear Tree Inn, where he came across Hagos who was eating his lunch.
He asked where Hagos was from, and when he replied that he was from Eritrea in east Africa, Parslow produced a knife and began to stab him, inflicting wounds to his chest and hand.
The prosecutor Tom Storey KC said: “This was no random attack. The defendant’s actions that day were carefully planned, and were driven by a particular ideology, specifically an extreme rightwing ideology, which had led him to identify and target his victim on the basis of his ethnicity.”
The message Parslow had tried to post on X read: “I just did my duty to England … They will call me a terrorist, they will call me an extremist: I am neither. I am but a gardener tending to the great garden of England. I removed the weeds; I exterminated the harmful, invasive species.”
The document goes on to talk about “the evil enemies of nature and of England” who Parslow identifies as “the Jews, the Marxists and the globalists”.
Storey said the full text “bears all the hallmarks of being an extreme rightwing terrorist manifesto”.
Police found that before the attack Parslow had researched hotels being used to house asylum seekers. The defendant told jurors he went to the hotel to stab “one of the Channel migrants” because he was “angry and frustrated” at small boat crossings.
The Pear Tree Inn was used by the government as a hotel for asylum seekers between November 2022 and February 2024 – at the time of the attack, it was closed to the public and undergoing renovations.
Hagos had stayed at the hotel before moving elsewhere, but in April he had travelled back to visit its manager, who he had become friendly with during his time there. Parslow stabbed Hagos twice in the chest and chased him outside to the car park where he continued to brandish the knife. Hagos then ran into the reception area of the hotel, where the manager locked the door.
He was taken to hospital in a van by the hotel manager and a builder as they feared he was losing too much blood to wait for an ambulance. Hagos had a 8cm-long cut to his chest that penetrated the muscle and a wound to his hand that cut through all the tendons for four of his fingers.
Parslow was later found by police walking along a canal with blood on his hands, and after a search of his house revealed items including a red swastika armband, he was arrested on suspicion of an act of terrorism.
Analysis of Parslow’s internet browser showed he had ordered a specialist knife from the US for $1,000 shortly before the attack, and searched “where is the worst place to get stabbed on the torso?”, “life imprisonment in England and Wales”, “murder”, and “lying in wait”.
The court also heard that in January Parslow’s tenancy was terminated by his landlord because of a racist note he left on a communal door.
The attempted murder trial could only be reported after a restriction was lifted when Parslow pleaded guilty to an unconnected sexual offence and two charges under the Malicious Communications Act. Parslow will be sentenced at a later date.
