Ashkan Asadian, an Iranian British man, chased the perpetrator of last week’s antisemitic stabbing attack in north London’s Golders Green neighborhood and helped one of the victims flee by distracting the terrorist, Asadian told the BBC.
Security camera footage from the Wednesday attack showed the perpetrator, identified by police as 45-year-old Somali-born UK national Essa Suleiman, stabbing Moshe Shine, 76, next to a bus stop. A passerby, identified by the BBC as Asadian, can be seen running in the direction of the attacker.
“Maybe I can save someone’s life,” Asadian, 61, recalled thinking at the time.
When Asadian reached them, Shine and the attacker had fallen to the road, with the attacker still holding the knife. Asadian recalled kicking the attacker and trying to grab the knife, giving the badly wounded Shine a chance to escape.
With no one else around to help, and realizing the attacker was “quite dangerous,” Asadian backed away, and watched as the attacker entered a grocery store as though he were a “normal shopper,” Asadian told the BBC.
According to the network, Asadian alerted a cashier that the attacker was carrying a knife, and a bystander called police while Asadian bought officers time by using a shopping cart to barricade the attacker inside the store.
Asadian eventually let the attacker out, fearing for the safety of the staff, and then pointed police in the direction of the attacker, who was sauntering down the road, Asadian told the BBC.
Asadian, a naturalized British citizen, came to the UK from Iran in 1999, and has two children who live in Golders Green, which is home to large Jewish, Asian and Middle Eastern communities. Asadian told the network that Iranians and Jews in the neighborhood live side by side in harmony.
“They have a good arrangement,” he said. “They have no problems.”
It made no difference to him whether the victim was Jewish or non-Jewish, he added: “They’re human.”
Shine and 34-year-old Shloime Rand were both seriously wounded in the attack last week. Suleiman, the alleged perpetrator, has been charged with three counts of attempted murder for the stabbing and for an attack earlier in the day on his acquaintance Ishmail Hussein in south London’s Southwark.
The stabbing in Golders Green was claimed by Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya (HAYI), an apparently Iran-linked group that has also taken responsibility for other antisemitic incidents in Europe amid the war in Iran, though authorities are still investigating the claims.
British and other Diaspora Jewish communities were already facing a massive spike in antisemitism amid the war sparked in Gaza by the Hamas-led onslaught of October 7, 2023.
Following the Golders Green attack, the UK’s top police officer said British Jews are facing their greatest-ever threat, and called for 300 armed officers to be deployed to protect the Jewish community of north London.
Source:
www.timesofisrael.com
