A Nazi-obsessed terrorist who tried to stab an asylum seeker to death in a protest over Channel crossings has been sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 22 years and eight months.
Callum Parslow repeatedly stabbed Nahom Hagos, 25, in the attack at a hotel previously used to house asylum seekers in Worcestershire on 2 April last year. Parslow, who has Adolf Hitler’s signature tattooed on his left arm, said he was “exterminating the invasive species” in a “terrorist manifesto” found on his phone after the attack.
At Woolwich crown court on Friday, Parslow, 32, was given a life sentence with a minimum term of 22 years and eight months.
Mr Justice Dove told him: “You committed a vicious and unprovoked assault on a complete stranger, Nahom Hagos, who suffered devastating injuries as a result of your violence.” He added that the assault was “undoubtedly a terrorist attack”.
Parslow was convicted of attempted murder at the end of a three-week trial at Leicester crown court in October, which heard that he had researched hotels being used to house asylum seekers before carrying out the attack. He had already pleaded guilty to a charge of wounding but not guilty to the charge of attempted murder.
Parslow told jurors he had gone to the Pear Tree Inn, a country hotel in Hindlip, to stab “one of the Channel migrants” because he was “angry and frustrated” at small boat crossings. He also claimed the attack was a protest over his impending eviction from his flat due to a racist note he had left on a communal door.
In a statement he tried to post on X immediately after the stabbing, he said: “I just did my duty to England … They will call me a terrorist, they will call me an extremist: I am neither. I am but a gardener tending to the great garden of England. I removed the weeds; I exterminated the harmful, invasive species.”
The prosecutor Tom Storey KC said the text “bears all the hallmarks of being an extreme rightwing terrorist manifesto”, and that Parslow “identified and targeted his victim on the basis of his ethnicity”.
When Parslow came across Hagos eating his lunch at the hotel, he asked him where he was from. When Hagos replied that he was from Eritrea in east Africa, Parslow produced a knife and began to stab him, inflicting wounds to his chest and hand.
Hagos ran into the hotel reception to escape the attack, and was taken to hospital where his wounds – including a 8cm-long cut to his chest and a gash to his hand that cut through the tendons for four of his fingers – were treated.
In a victim impact statement, Hagos said he still suffered from “excruciating pain” in his hand.
“The pain is unbearable and keeps me awake all night long,” he said. “I had been living and pursuing a happy life before the incident. This is now a distant memory. I feel lonely and don’t feel safe on the street. My life has been turned upside down.”
Hagos said he struggled to understand why Parslow attacked him, saying: “I was a law-abiding, good person.”
after newsletter promotion
After his conviction, it was revealed that Parslow was jailed in 2018 for targeting 10 women and girls with messages describing sexually motivated murder, torture and rape, and had changed his name after his release from prison.
He had been referred to the Prevent anti-radicalisation programme in 2019 but no further action was taken.
Bethan David, the head of the Crown Prosecution Service’s counter-terrorism division, said: “This attack was carried out to intimidate a section of the public – namely asylum seekers and those providing accommodation to asylum seekers.
“Callum Parslow’s neo-Nazi views motivated him to viciously attack a man based solely on the colour of his skin and the place he was from, and he sought to spread fear amongst a community.”
