A construction worker has been sentenced to life in prison for the “senseless” murder of a Saudi Arabian student in Cambridge.
Chas Corrigan, of Holbrook Road, was sentenced at Cambridge Crown Court on Thursday after stabbing 20-year-old Mohammed Algasim in the neck outside student accommodation in August 2025. He must serve a minimum of 22 years and six months, having been found guilty of murder at an earlier trial.
The court heard Algasim, who had been studying at a language school, was sitting with friends near Cambridge Railway Station when he was attacked. Prosecutors said Corrigan, who had drunk beer, gin and several vodka drinks and taken cocaine, struck him with a kitchen knife he claimed to be carrying for protection. The killing was captured on CCTV, and the two had never met before.
Mr Justice Dias described the killing as “fuelled by alcohol and cocaine and anger”, telling the court Corrigan had taken a “lethal combination” and posed “a high risk of serious harm to the public”. He said Algasim “was an entirely innocent member of the public” who had been robbed of “the promising life ahead of him”.
The judge dismissed Corrigan’s claimed remorse as ringing “hollow” in light of his “continuing falsehoods” about the attack. “Perhaps no-one will ever understand why you did what you have done,” he said. “It was literally senseless. It made no sense.”
Corrigan’s father, Peter Corrigan, 50, was jailed for two years after admitting assisting an offender by concealing high-visibility clothing his son had worn during the attack.
In a statement to the court, Algasim’s father, Yousef Al Qasim, said he had sent his son abroad “full of hope for his future, only for him to return as a victim of senseless violence”. The judge said the family suffered “life-changing grief”, adding that the loss had been “catastrophic” to Algasim’s mother.