A man who slashed two friends with a knife during a drunken row over the murder of soldier Lee Rigby has been jailed for five years.
Ziko Sulliman, 27, an asylum seeker from Sudan, grabbed the knife and attacked Zakaria Zain, who had apparently expressed disgust at the killing while watching TV coverage of the murder of Fusilier Rigby, 25, in Woolwich, southLondon, in May.
Zain suffered a wound to the cheek which required five stitches and also to the leg. Khalid Osman's hand was cut when he tried to intervene.
A witness told police Sulliman had been watching the TV news with the two in Middlesbrough when Zain expressed his disgust at the killing and he and Sulliman then started to speak in their native tongue before the row broke out, a source close to the case said after the hearing.
Sulliman had admitted wounding with intent to do grevious bodily harm, wounding and having a blade, at a previous hearing at Teesside crown court.
Andrew Teate, defending, said Sulliman, of Middlesbrough, was distressed by what he had done to his friends.
"It is alcohol that has played a very significant part in this offending," Teate said.
Judge George Moorhouse jailed him for five years, saying: "These are very serious offences, so serious that a custodial sentence is the only suitable penalty."
Rigby, a drummer with the 2nd Battalion, Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, died of multiple stab wounds inflicted as he returned to barracks in Woolwich on 22 May.
Michael Adebolajo, 28, of Romford, Essex, and Michael Adebowale, 22, of Greenwich, London, have been charged with his murder and are expected to go on trial in November.
