Leicester explosion: Three men guilty of murder after five killed in shop blast

Crime reporter,Leicester(wp/es):

Three men have been found guilty of murder after five people, including a mother and two sons, were killed in a shop explosion in Leicester.

Aram Kurd, Arkan Ali and Hawkar Hassan lit 26 litres of petrol in the basement of the shop to benefit from a £330,000 pay-out.

The explosion completely destroyed the shop, a Polish supermarket in Hinckley Road where Kurd worked, and a flat above.

Leicester Crown Court heard how some residents living nearby thought a bomb had reduced the property to rubble.

A five-week trial was told the defendants left shop worker Viktorija Ijevleva, 22, to die in the building because she was aware of the insurance policy taken out less than three weeks earlier.

Opening the Crown's case at the start of the trial, prosecutor David Herbert QC told a jury the defendants intended to maximise the damage to the premises and "would have known" people would have been in the two-storey flat above.

Ali, 38, Hassan, 33, and Kurd, 34, were assisted by a Kurdish interpreter throughout the trial after denying murder and alternative counts of manslaughter.

The three men showed little emotion after the jury unanimously found them guilty of five counts of murder after just over 11 hours of deliberations.

The trio were also convicted of conspiring with Ms Ijevleva to make a gain by dishonestly pursuing an insurance claim in respect of the fire.

Ms Ijevleva, Mary Ragoobeer, 46, her teenage sons Shane and Sean, and 18-year-old Leah Beth Reek, who was Shane's girlfriend, were all killed in the blast on Sunday, February 25.

Around 26 litres of petrol was used to start the fire in the basement of the supermarket, triggering a massive explosion at 7.01pm.

CCTV and traffic camera footage released by police at the end of the trial shows people escaping from a nearby takeaway moments after the explosion, and rubble being blasted into the roadway as cars pass by.

Footage recovered by police from a neighbouring business showed Ali in shot three days before the blast moments before the camera angle was moved.

Further images from the same CCTV unit a day before the fire showed a gloved hand moving the camera angle again, at a time when all three defendants were nearby.

Kurd was also recorded on a security camera as he escaped from the scene at the rear of the shop.

Ali, from Oldham, Hassan, from Coventry, and Kurd, from Leicester, were remanded in custody and will be sentenced in mid-January.