AN asylum seeker who claimed to be fighting for the so-called Islamic State when he killed a Japanese man in Co Louth has been found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity.
Mohamed Morei (21) stabbed Yosuke Sasaki (24) to death on a Dundalk street in January 2018.
The Egyptian native had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to the murder.
A jury spent 24 minutes considering their verdicts and yesterday found him not guilty of murder by reason of insanity.
He was remanded to the Central Mental Hospital and will appear in court again later this month when a plan for his ongoing treatment is due to be outlined.
Morei, of no fixed abode, was also found not guilty by reason of insanity of assaulting two men causing them harm on the same day at Quay Street and Inner Relief Road in Dundalk.
The same verdict was returned for a charge of criminal damage to a car and of robbery by trespassing and committing criminal damage between 2 and 3 last year.
During the trial, two consultant psychiatrists told the court that Morei was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia at the time of the stabbing.
He told psychiatrists he was hearing voices in his head and believed he had been poisoned by the PSNI.
They said he did not know what he was doing was wrong and was unable to refrain from his actions.
Following the verdicts, Justice Carmel Stewart thanked the jurors and told them they were exempt from further service for five years.
She also sympathised with the Sasaki family who travelled from Japan for the trial.
Mr Sasaki’s sister Shiori Sasaki said after the verdict that she could not understand "why a mentally unstable foreign national, whose origin was unknown, was allowed to be in the town".
"It is truly infuriating and will forever be unforgivable," she said.