A Muslim schoolboy described as a perfect pupil and a model son was murdered by a drunken white teenager who had only been released from custody three days earlier, a court heard today.

Ahmed Hassan, 17, an A* student who hoped to become a lawyer, was waiting with friends to catch a Saturday afternoon train to Manchester when he received a fatal stab wound in the back.

The knife was wielded by Michael Brook, 18, from Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, who had arrived at the town’s railway station “thoroughly drunk” after consuming spirits throughout the morning.

Brook, who had made 44 previous court appearances and already had a conviction for possessing a knife, was celebrating his release earlier that week from a young offenders’ institution.

Today he began a life sentence for murder after being told by the Recorder of Leeds, Judge Peter Collier QC, that he would serve a minimum of 14 years in prison.

Brook went to the station in December last year with an equally inebriated friend, Anthony Sorren, 17, who quickly began to make a nuisance of himself.

The judge said Sorren paid other passengers “unwanted and intrusive attention which alternated between being threatening and over-familiar and had the potential to turn very nasty at any minute”.

Ahmed’s misfortune was to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. He and a group of Asian friends were on the platform, waiting to go shopping to buy clothes for the Muslim festival of Eid al Adha.

Alistair Macdonald QC, for the prosecution, said that Sorren approached Ahmed’s group and said to them: “What are you looking at? You got beef?”

The friends tried to assure Sorren that they had not been looking at him and Ahmed - attempting to diffuse the situation - asked him for a hug.

Sorren briefly became friendly, but when the train arrived there was some jostling as people attempted to board. Sorren threw a punch and Brook drew his knife, stabbing Ahmed with a single thrust.

The Heckmondwike Grammar School pupil staggered down the platform before collapsing in a pool of blood. He was pronounced dead in hospital later that night.

In police interviews, Brook initially claimed that one of the Asians had attacked him with a knife, which he took off him before lunging out “in panic”.

Graham Hyland QC, in mitigation, said today that Brook now admitted this was untrue.

“I make that point because of the repeated lies, and wicked lies they were too, that he told the police," he said.

"Mr Hassan and his friends, minding their own business, were entirely innocent, which is a feature which makes this case all the more tragic.”

Mr Hyland said the stabbing was not racially motivated. It was “drink-fuelled, mindless violence with a lethal weapon”.

Brook pleaded guilty to murder at an earlier hearing. Sorren, who admitted affray, was sentenced to a four-month detention and training order.

Ahmed was taking A levels in politics, mathematics, law and economics in preparation to read law at university. His funeral was attended by 5,000 people.

He was described by his head teacher, Mark Tweedle, as “a thoughtful and articulate young man who was gentle, kind and sensitive”.

One of his teachers said that “if the world was full of Ahmed Hassans the world would be a very much better place”.

In a victim impact statement that was read to the court, the dead boy’s mother, Yasmin Hassan, said that life without her son was “like missing a limb”.

“I sometimes forget that he is no longer here but the reality is that I feel my loss every single day. Life without Ahmed will always be empty,” she said.

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