Abdul-Latif Pouget (right) with brother Badruddin

THE brother of a semi-professional footballer who was fatally injured in a horrifying machete murder said he does not believe his attacker meant to kill him, as he called for greater awareness about the dangers of carrying knives.

Badruddin Pouget spoke to the Extra after Oguzcan Dereli, 27, was sentenced to 24 years in prison at the Old Bailey for the murder of Abdul-Latif Pouget.

Abdul, known to his friends and family as Abs, was the great-grandson of one of the wealthiest landowners in the country – George de Vere Drummond – a banker who owned “most of Charing Cross” and was close friends with King George VI.

Born and raised in Holborn, he died three days after being attacked with a 2ft blade in Clerkenwell on October 21 last year. The 20-year-old suffered a single stab wound to the leg that ruptured a main artery, causing irreparable complications, the court heard.

At sentencing, the judge said she could not be sure there had been an “intent to kill”.

Mr Pouget, 25, told the Extra: “I don’t believe he intended to kill my brother. In a sense that made it much worse.

“I think a lot of people don’t really know what can happen when you carry a knife, or the implications of stabbing someone.”

Mr Pouget spoke about how knife crime had become ingrained in youth culture – in music, the internet and on social media, adding: “It is something to do with being a dangerous person. There is a glorification of that lifestyle that doesn’t help. People even brag about murders. It’s difficult to wrap your head around.”

On what can be done, he said it was a complex issue that required the government to “admit that some deep work is needed”.

Football clubs came together for a minute’s silence in the wake of the tragic killing of Abdul

The Pouget family is well known around Holborn and hundreds of people attended Abdul’s funeral last year. His death has left a deep hole in the community.

After his GCSEs, Abdul went to a football college and played at semi-pro level before being offered a contract at a top-rated team in Turkey.

“Football really was an option for him,” said Badruddin. “But in some ways, it might not have been enough for him. We used to have deep conversations about philosophical ideas and concepts, like determinism and free will. And he had loads of ambitions. He wanted to open a food-stall, and when he was quite young started doing e-commerce, which is what I do now for a living. He inspired his older brother.”

The Extra reported in October last year how 100 football clubs came together for a minute’s silence in the wake of the tragedy.

Abdul’s grandfather Baron Robert Pouget – who he was particularly fond of – had told the Extra how his great-grandfather was the banker George de Vere Drummond, a godson of King George VI.

Baron Pouget said: “His great-grandfather owned pretty much the whole of Charing Cross. He was immensely wealthy, one of the main landlords of the city. Then you have this terrible thing happen to his offspring.”

Abdul and his family had been brought up in a markedly different way, understanding richness to be about more than material wealth.

“I think we don’t need that many things to be happy,” said Badruddin.

Oguzcan Dereli

The Old Bailey had heard that Dereli was one of nine siblings of a Kurdish family living in “cramped conditions” in a three-bed council flat in Holloway. His mother was unwell and his father was long-term unemployed. He had been permanently excluded from school aged 14 and had not got any qualifications, falling into a life of a drug dealer and life of petty crime. He had a long list of previous convictions. In 2018, aged 20, he had been jailed for a year-and-a-half for a crime spree snatching mobile phones on a moped.

Old Bailey judge Sarah Whitehouse also said at the sentencing that she did not believe that the murder was committed “in the course of a robbery”, adding: “There was rumour on the streets suggesting some pre-existing animosity over a debt. We will never know the truth, but we cannot say that the motive was theft and so this was not a murder for gain.”

At the sentencing, Badruddin addressed Dereli in the dock in a powerful impact statement.

“You may have only known him for a few seconds, Mr Dereli,” he said. “But I knew him for 20 years, 20 years of laughter, 20 years of promise, 20 years of brotherhood. And in one act of violence, you ended all of it.

“He was a young man who used to break up disputes on the pitch. A young man who, unlike you, was loved for who he was not feared for what he might do.

“You gave us memories that no family should ever have to carry. We carry them every day, in the birthdays that will now feel like funerals, in the empty chair at dinner, in the football boots that haven’t been touched since, in the unused training cones sitting in his room.

“Do you know what it’s like to walk past your little brother’s room, and hear nothing? We do.”