Saudi student murder 'senseless', says judge

A judge has described the murder of a Saudi Arabian student in a Cambridge street as "senseless" and "fuelled by alcohol and cocaine and anger".

Construction worker Chas Corrigan was sentenced to life in prison on Thursday after he stabbed 20-year-old Mohammed Algasim in the neck outside student accommodation in August 2025.

Mr Justice Dias said in his summing up at Cambridge Crown Court that Corrigan, of Holbrook Road in the city, had taken a "lethal combination" which led to the killing.

He added that Algasim "was an entirely innocent member of the public" and Corrigan had "robbed him" and his family of the "promising life ahead of him".

Corrigan is expected to serve a minimum term of 22 years and six months in prison, after being found guilty of murder at an earlier trial.

Jurors had heard how Algasim had been studying at a language school and was sitting with friends near Cambridge Railway Station.

Prosecutors said Corrigan, who had drunk beer, gin and several vodka drinks and taken cocaine, attacked Algasim with a kitchen knife, which he claimed he was carrying for protection. The killing was captured on CCTV.

At sentencing, Mr Justice Dias said the construction worker posed "a high risk of serious harm to the public".

Speaking about the killer's remorse, the judge said: "I find that the remorse he purports to express and the responsibility he says he accepts in fact ring hollow in light of his continuing falsehoods about his conduct, and failure to accept the facts that any reasonable and rational person can see from the video footage of the murder.

"Ultimately, it is not remorse if he does not accept what has been proved beyond reasonable doubt.

"Perhaps no-one will ever understand why you did what you have done.

"It was literally senseless. It made no sense."

Corrigan's father, Peter Corrigan, 50, was also jailed for two years after pleading guilty to assisting an offender, after concealing high-visibility clothing that his son had been wearing at the time of the attack.

On the first day of the two-day sentencing, Algasim's father, Yousef Al Qasim, told Mr Justice Dias: "Instead of witnessing his achievements, I was confronted with the unbearable reality of receiving his lifeless body.

"The pain of sending a son abroad to study, full of hope for his future, only for him to return as a victim of senseless violence, despite having caused no problem to anyone, is beyond what words can express."

Mr Justice Dias said Algasim's father "suffers from life-changing grief and psychological trauma", adding that his death has had "severe and ongoing impact across the family".

"The grief of living without her son in the home has been catastrophic to his mother," the judge added.

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