LONDON, Oct 17: A British soldier was jailed for life on Friday for the racist murder of a Bangladeshi waiter in Scotland, in a case which triggered high emotions and which has dragged on for 14 years.

Michael Ross, who went on to serve in Iraq with the elite Scottish Black Watch regiment, was 15 when he killed Shamsuddin Mahmood in a restaurant on the Scottish island of Orkney in 1994.

“This was a vicious, evil, unprovoked murder of a defenceless man. The attack was a premeditated assassination,” Judge Andrew Hardie told Ross, who is now 30 years old.

During a six-week trial the court heard how a masked Ross burst into the Mumutaz restaurant on the evening of June 2, 1994 and shot dead the 26-year-old waiter at point blank range in front of shocked diners.

Defence lawyer Donald Findlay said Ross continued to maintain his innocence, saying he was not a racist and adding that his conviction was a “great loss” to his family and country.

But prosecutors, reporting that a Nazi swastika had been found in a notebook belonging to the then-cadet, alleged that he had singled out Shamsuddin as one of the few Asians on Orkney, off Scotland’s northern coast.

Referring to evidence heard during the trial, the judge told Ross: “It is never acceptable to say a gun should be put to the head of blacks and they should be shot ... Even in 1994 such a remark was a racist comment.” Ross — who became a Black Watch sniper — was convicted by majority verdict in June after a six-week trial at the High Court in Glasgow. Sentencing him Friday, the judge said he must spend at least 25 years behind bars.

Shamsuddin’s brother Abul Shafuddin welcomed the sentencing.

“At last the killer has been brought to justice — it’s a big consolation for us,” he told the BBC. “At one stage we lost all hope that his killer would be found.” Calling Ross an “evil person,” he added: “We cannot forgive him. He owes an apology to the family which he has not tendered. He is not a reformed person.

“There cannot be any other motive than racism. If somebody else was in my brother’s place at that time he might have killed him,” he said.—AFP