Cafe worker, a refugee, gets life for fatal stabbing of customer

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This article was published 05/11/2021 (1785 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Palestinian refugee convicted of killing a customer outside the café where he worked has been sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 11 years.

Mahfouth Assi, 24, was found guilty of second-degree murder in the April 2019 stabbing death of 20-year-old Yazan Al Horani and attempted murder for an attack on a second man outside the Ramallah Café and hookah lounge on Pembina Highway.

Assi, who never denied attacking the men but claimed he had been provoked, faces almost certain deportation after completing the custodial portion of his sentence.

Assi agreed to plead guilty to manslaughter and aggravated assault at the beginning of his trial, but the offer was not accepted by prosecutors.

Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Anne Turner rejected Assi’s contention he “acted on the sudden” following an angry argument with the second victim, Moussa Almousa, inside the café. The judge said Assi had time for his “passion to cool” before attacking the two men outside.

“Both victims were unarmed and standing outside on a busy city street,” Turner said. “Clearly they thought the altercation from inside the café was over and there was no impending danger.”

Court heard at trial that Almousa visited the café with Al Horani and about 10 friends to celebrate Almousa’s birthday.

Assi and Almousa became embroiled in a heated exchange of culturally charged insults after Assi took exception to Almousa standing on a bench to take a selfie with his friends.

Following the selfie dispute, Assi raised the matter with a café manager, at which point Almousa shoved Assi and the two men insulted each other’s female relatives.

As the dispute escalated, Almousa grabbed a knife from a table but quickly surrendered it to staff who had separated the two men. A manager told Almousa, Al Horani and their friends to leave the restaurant, which they did, and they told Assi to go home.

Assi grabbed a knife from the kitchen, left out the back door and stopped briefly at his car before rounding the corner of the building and stabbing the two victims as they stood with their friends in front of the café.

“Once the group attending Mr. Almousa’s birthday party was out the front door of the café and Mr. Assi was told to go out the back door and go home, the whole incident could have been over,” Turner said. “It should have been over. Mr. Assi should have simply driven away.”

Al Horani, who stood in the way of Assi and Almousa, was stabbed once in the heart and died almost immediately.

Almousa was stabbed in the chest and flank and spent 22 days in hospital.

Al Horani and his family emigrated from Syria in 2017, after spending years in a refugee camp in Jordan, a family friend told the Free Press following his death. He was taking adult education courses, had started a job at Blady Middle Eastern grocery store and was recently engaged to be married.

“Our life has become a barren desert,” his father wrote in a victim impact statement previously provided to court. “We do not believe and do not want to believe that he is gone.”

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca