Trial opens into knife murder of British lawmaker Amess

A prosecutor says a man who stabbed a veteran British lawmaker to death while he was meeting voters last year was a “committed Islamist terrorist” who had spent years researching and planning potential attacks on lawmakers

LONDON -- A man who stabbed a veteran British lawmaker to death last year while he was meeting with voters was a “committed Islamist terrorist” who had spent years researching and planning potential attacks on lawmakers, a prosecutor said Monday.

Ali Harbi Ali, 26, appeared in the dock Monday at London's Central Criminal Court as a trial opened into the murder of Conservative lawmaker David Amess, who was attacked on Oct. 16 during a routine meeting with constituents in a church hall in the town of Leigh-on-Sea in eastern England.

Ali, a London man with Somali heritage, denies charges of murder and preparing acts of terrorism.

Opening the trial, prosecutor Tom Little said the case was “nothing less than an assassination” carried out because of a “warped and twisted and violent ideology.”