This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Three men who murdered five people by causing an explosion at a Leicester shop in a £300,000 insurance scam have been jailed for life.

Aram Kurd, Hawkar Hassan and Arkan Ali blew up a supermarket and a flat above, in Hinckley Road on 25 February last year.

Leicester crown court heard they set alight 26 litres petrol in the Polish supermarket’s basement.

Kurd and Ali must serve a minimum of 38 years, while Hassan was given a term of 33 years. A mother and her two teenage sons were among those killed by the blast.

Mary Ragoobar, 46, Shane Ragoobeer, 18, and Sean, 17, had lived above the shop and died in the explosion. Shane’s girlfriend Leah Beth Reek, 18, and shop worker Viktorija Ijevleva, 22, were also killed.

Mary’s husband Jose Ragoobeer, who had been at work at the time of the blast, told the court he “came to England for a better life” with his family.

“All of our hopes and dreams for the future have been completely shattered,” he added. “They were all good people and did not deserve for this to happen to them.”

Ragoobeer’s youngest son, Scotty, 15, was taken to hospital but his injuries were not serious.

During the six-week trial, the court was told that Ali, 38, from Oldham, Hassan, 33, from Coventry, and Kurd, 34, from Leicester, intended to maximise the damage to the building and were aware occupants were in the flat above.

Ivejleva, who was Ali’s girlfriend, was said to have been left to die by the defendants because she was aware of the plan and had helped Kurd to arrange an insurance policy on the store’s contents about three weeks earlier.

David Herbert QC, for the prosecution, said while in custody before the trial, Kurd told an inmate they were likely to acquire a bigger insurance payout if someone died.

The defendants, who were assisted by Kurdish interpreters throughout the trial, denied five counts of murder and claimed they had played no part in an insurance scam.

Zabka, the Polish supermarket, had been open since December 2017. The explosion completely destroyed the shop and the upstairs two-storey flat, leading nearby residents to initially fear a bomb had gone off.

Natalija Ijevleva, the mother of Ijevleva, who was originally part of the insurance scam, apologised on behalf of her daughter.

Her victim impact statement, read by Herbert, said: “I could have stopped her from going ahead and prevented this tragedy. I feel I failed as a mother to protect my child.

“My thoughts again go out to the families of the four wholly innocent victims, their loss must be indescribable.”