Man held knife to throat of mum's new boyfriend & threatened to cut out his eye, court hears

A MAN became obsessed his mother was having a new relationship and during a violent attack on the pensioner involved, put a knife to his throat telling the man he was going to die.

Sajjad Dehghan-Afifi invited 68-year-old John Ling to his flat in Huddersfield after contacting him for the first time in three months.

But he then stood over his visitor after ordering him to sit down.

When Mr Ling apprehensively stood up to go, feeling intimidated by the younger man, he was told he was not going anywhere.

“The defendant took a few steps towards him, put his arms around his torso and threw him on the sofa,” Richard Butters prosecuting told Leeds Crown Court yesterday.

Mr Ling tried to calm the 20-year-old down despite being very frightened but that did not work because Dehghan-Afifi got him on the floor.

He straddled the pensioner, sitting on his legs and became abusive calling him a “stupid old man” before punching him six or seven times.

He then reached behind him and produced a serrated knife with a four to five-inch blade which he held to Mr Ling’s throat, again asking about his relationship with his mother.

When Mr Ling said he could not talk about it with the knife there the defendant pressed it harder to his skin telling him: “You are going to die. I will kill you.”

Mr Ling said he had never been more scared in his life as his attacker moved the blade, causing a small cut before showing him the blood on the knife.

He also threatened to stick the knife into Mr Ling’s eye and cut it out.

Mr Ling said he could “feel his heart pounding” but in a flash his attacker suddenly became calm and let him sit on the sofa.

He said to his surprise Dehghan-Afifi got him some water before letting him go, ending his ordeal although his face was badly bruised.

The 20-year-old had been asked to leave his mother’s home some months previously after becoming increasingly aggressive towards her and his younger brother, said Mr Butters.

Arshad Khan, representing Dehghan-Afifi, said he was Iranian but had joined his mother and brother in 2009, his mother having fled to the UK because of domestic violence towards her.

Mr Khan said in Iran the male in the family was dominant and females subservient and he found the culture shift in Yorkshire very different.

When told by others that his mother had started a new relationship kept secret from him, he had taken that deceit badly, for his father had become depressed.

He was unaware at that time that his father had also formed a new relationship, had he known that he might have felt differently.

Dehghan-Afifi, of Queen Elizabeth Gardens, Trinity Street, was sent to a young offender institution for three years after he admitted false imprisonment and assault on December 28 last year.

Judge Tom Bayliss QC said the relationship had been kept secret from him because it was feared he would cause difficulties over it: “Indeed that is precisely what happened.”

He did not accept the violence was spontaneous on seeing Mr Ling that evening: “This was a pre-meditated incident of violence and it was done in an effort to subjugate and control your mother who had done nothing to offend you.”