Welsh tourist killer gets 30 years

ORLEANS, France, Jan 27 (AFP) – A 21-year-old Frenchman was Tuesday sentenced to 30 years in jail for fatally stabbing a British vacationer in a railway station in central France in April 2002.

The prison term handed down by a jury against Elias Lagdani went well beyond the 20 years requested by state prosecutors, reflecting the seemingly senseless nature of the murder and the tragic circumstances surrounding Aaron Powell’s death.

Powell, a 56-year-old mechanic from Cardiff, Wales, had been in France to recover from the stress of a trial concerning a man who had killed his 19-year-old daughter in a hit-and-run car accident in 2000.

He had been travelling with a friend of his daughter and, on the night of his death, was preparing to catch a train from Orleans to Barcelona in Spain to join his wife and granddaughter.

Before boarding the train, Powell left to make some purchases for the journey. It was then that he came across Lagdani, who stabbed him once in the heart with a long knife.

Lagdani had turned himself in a week after the murder, but, despite extensive questioning from police, was unable to give a motive for the crime.

Powell’s lifeless body was found next to an escalator in a rundown complex linking the city’s railway station and a shopping center.Some EUR 2,000 (USD 2,400) in cash that he had on him was untouched, and there were no witnesses to the slaying.

Subject: France news