Life for Zimbabwean asylum seeker who murdered his ex-girlfriend

Bedford Today:

An asylum seeker who stabbed his girlfriend to death after she had finished the relationship was jailed for life this week after being found guilty of her murder.

Zimbabwean Taonezvi Mashozhera had already had his application to stay in the UK turned down when he killed pretty Esnath Mundicha.

But because he had launched an appeal against the decision, he was allowed to remain here while his case was reviewed.

On Wednesday a jury at St Albans Crown Court rejected Mashozhera's claim that he had killed her due to provocation.

Throughout the trial he had pleaded not guilty to murdering 22-year-old Esnath, but guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of provocation.

Passing sentence on 25-year-old Mashozhera, Judge Findlay Baker QC told him: "You stabbed to death one whom you had loved.

"You have been found guilty of murder and the sentence for murder is fixed by law. It is life imprisonment."

The judge said the ferocity of the attack, and the fact Mashozhera had gone to get a second knife when the first one broke, had led him to one conclusion: "What you had in mind was to kill the poor woman, rather than inflict serious injury."

He will serve a minimum of 14 years, minus the 547 days he has spent on remand, before becoming eligible for early release.

The jury also found him guilty of the common assault of Esnath's new boyfriend, but cleared him of a charge of burglary at her flat.

At the time he stabbed Esnath, on November 7, 2004, at her bedsit flat in Alexandra Road, Bedford, Mashozhera was on police bail after being arrested for these two offences.

A condition was that he should not have gone anywhere near her.

Mashozhera, of no fixed address, claimed during his trial that he had been forced to flee Zimbabwe after becoming a member of the opposition MDC party.

Failed asylum seeker given life for murder