Call to license knife sellers after killer bought 79 blades
RETAILERS that sell knives should be licensed in the same way as those that sell guns, a former policing chief has said after it emerged that a teen killer bought 79 blades from the same website.
Rayis Nibeel, 17, was one of the attackers who stabbed Omar Khan, 38, during a drug deal gone wrong.
He had amassed weapons worth £1,000, including swords, machetes and the knife used in the murder. Festus Akinbusoye, Britain’s first black police and crime commissioner, said this should not have been allowed, and called for more regulation including mandatory permits.
‘[The] Government needs to urgently look at ensuring all retailers of certain knives and blades objects are licensed as are those who sell firearms for, say, hunting,’ the ex-Bedfordshire PCC said. ‘This will require vetting, proof of safe storage and confirmation of usage.’
Nibeel, who is beginning a 20year sentence, used his mother’s ID to bypass age verification checks to buy weapons from UKbased DNA Leisure. His purchases included knife sets as well as 39 hunting knives, 15 machetes and 12 swords. Nibeel can be named after St Albans Crown Court lifted an anonymity order last week.
The weapons were delivered to his home in Luton before he and Umer Choudhury, 18, stabbed their victim last September. The teenagers had bought the weapons online over 13 transactions with the intention of robbing their drug dealer, their trial heard.
Police only discovered the link to DNA Leisure after speaking to a neighbour who had accepted a package for the
‘Require vetting and proof’
teenager. Following a BBC investigation, DNA Leisure said Nibeel had committed fraud. ‘We used an age-verified courier to deliver the parcel.
We did not break the law in any way,’ it added.
In 2022, Ronan Kanda was murdered with a sword bought from the same retailer, also using false identification.
Police forces recorded 49,489 knife crimes in 2023, up from 46,153 the previous year. The number of robberies involving a knife increased by a fifth.