Jamal Mahmoud

Jamal Mahmoud was stabbed in Pentonville Prison on 18 October 2016.

Three men were tried for his murder and manslaughter but acquitted although one of the men was convicted of wounding another inmate with intent to commit GBH.

It was said that they had had a row over smuggled contraband which escalated into a fight.

Two other men were stabbed in the fight.

He was a senior member of the Get Money Gang from Enfield and was nicknamed Kaos. The Get Money Gang was made up mostly of Somali men and controlled contraband in the prison wing.

The police said that they had ranked the Get Money Gang as number two in a list of 200 gangs based on their threat level and that they controlled most of the drugs supplied across Enfield. Four members of the Get Money Gang were convicted for murdering Negus McClean, who was a member of the Dem Africans gang, in 2013 in a turf war. It was heard that Jamal Mahmoud had been arrested in relation to Negus McClean's murder but not charged.

Jamal Mahmoud had eight convictions for twelve offences, including possession of a knife and robbery. He was convicted on 15 July 2016 for plotting to transfer prohibited weapons and ammunition following the discovery by the police of a weapons cache in a shed that included a Skorpion sub-machine gun and a .45 Colt self-loading pistol.

He had also once been stabbed by a rival gang and thrown into a river.

At the time of the murder, Jamal Mahmoud's girlfriend had just given birth to his daughter.

Jamal Mahmoud had a row with a Congolese man over a package that contained drugs and phones into G Wing on some sheets. The package was described as being as large as a football. During the argument Jamal Mahmoud, who wanted his share of the package was heard to say, 'If you want war, I'll give you war'.

It was heard that the three men later went to see Jamal Mahmoud to have a word with him and took him out onto a landing where the fight then broke out after one of Jamal Mahmoud's friends came out and swung a weighted sock at one of them. The man he tried to hit said, 'He tried to hit me. I saw it coming and I blocked it and swung towards him'. He said that Jamal Mahmoud then stabbed him with a kitchen knife in the back and so he pulled out a folding knife and swung it at Jamal Mahmoud, catching him in his hand.

When the judge asked the man why he carried a folding knife, the man replied, 'the majority of G Wing prisoners have weapons. Every time I come out of my cell I've got it because it's a dangerous place'. However, he said that he had no reason to attack Jamal Mahmoud and had not been looking for a fight.

The Congolese man said that Jamal Mahmoud's friend then attacked him with a hunting knife and that he took the hunting knife off of him and stabbed him with it. He said 'It was a big knife in a sheath. I was curious. I had never seen that kind of weapon in prison'.

The Congolese man denied being in a gang or knowing anything about any trouble with the Somalis before the fight. It was noted that he took medication for paranoid schizophrenia and that he had convictions for 15 offences including robbery and carrying a knife. He had come to England when he was 11 years old  shortly after the civil war broke out there.

The hunting knife was later found on the floor in G Wing. It was noted that the hunting knife was a proper knife manufactured outside of the prison and not a shank that had been made inside the prison.

The court heard that the men involved all had serious convictions:

• Jamal Mahmoud: Eight convictions for twelve offences, including possession of a knife and robbery.
• Jamal Mahmoud's friend: Unknown.
• Congolese Man: Fifteen offences including possession of a knife and robbery. It was noted that he had attacked a man at an immigration centre after telling him that he couldn't play pool. He was also involved with a cash-in-transit robbery.
• Second Man: Seventeen convictions for thirty six offences for wounding with intent, dealing in cocaine and heroin and having a knife.
• Third Man: Four convictions for five crimes, including possession of a firearm and having a knife. It was noted that he only had a few months left to serve at the time of the murder.

All three of the men were acquitted of murder.

At the time of the murder, following a survey, two thirds of inmates in Pentonville Prison said that they felt unsafe there. Pentonville Prison was built in 1842.

The Prison Officer Association later said, 'The unprecedented rise in violence in all of our prisons must not be underestimated. There have been a significant number of suspicious deaths in prisons, which the police have being investigating over the last 18 months. We now ask for the Ministry of Justice to fully investigate this matter and the underlying problems'.