DNA Leisure, an online shop that supplied blades to at least two teenage murderers, has announced that it would no longer sell knives or swords. The decision was described as a “commercial decision” and came after the BBC reported last month that Rayis Nibeel had purchased 79 knives and swords from the site before murdering Omar Khan in Luton. The company, which is based in Luton and is run by former Junior Apprentice candidate Adam Eliaz, had previously stated that it complied with all UK laws and that Nibeel had committed fraud.
A spokesperson for DNA Leisure explained that the company was attempting to sell the remaining items to an overseas buyer. Some models of large knives are due to be banned in England and Wales in September 2021. Earlier this year, several blades on the firm’s site likely to be caught by the ban were marked for a “massive stock clearance,” with some sold at a discount.
Nibeel had purchased 79 knives, swords, and machetes from DNA Leisure between January and September 2020. He was 16 at the time. Among the knives was the blade used to kill Mr Khan in the early hours of 16 September 2023. Mr Khan’s murder was not the first committed with a blade bought from DNA Leisure by a juvenile. In 2022, Ronan Kanda was murdered with a sword purchased from the retailer using false identity and the site was also linked to the murder of 16-year-old Rahaan Amin in London in 2020.
The company’s website, which had been known for offering an array of typically cheap and often highly stylised and colourful knives, machetes, and swords for sale, has been rightly focused on the company. Gavin Hales, a senior associate fellow at the Policing Foundation think-tank, said the repeat purchases by Nibeel without DNA Leisure raising any concerns about the numbers involved were inexcusable. Bedfordshire’s former Police and Crime Commissioner, Festus Akinbusoye, welcomed the move away from selling blades, but he expressed anger that it has taken the murder of yet another resident to get to this point
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