AS KRISS DONALD was seized in a Glasgow street and punched and bundled into a car by a gang of Asian youths, he pleaded: “I’m only 15 — what did I do?” a court was told yesterday.

The slightly built schoolboy, who was later murdered, proved no match for his attackers, who had set out one afternoon to cruise the streets of Pollokshields, seeking revenge on any white youth for a bottle attack at a nightclub the previous evening.

Imran Shahid, 29, nicknamed Baldy, had earlier told the gang that he had been attacked at Victoria’s club by “the boys from McCulloch Street”, a predominantly white area of Pollokshields. He said that he wanted to “chop someone up and take their eyes out” and the five men armed themselves with a hammer, screwdriver and a knife before starting out on their search for a white victim, the High Court in Edinburgh was told.

Unfortunately for Kriss, the gang spotted him walking with a friend down Kenmure Street, near McCulloch Street, on March 15, 2004. The court was told that if Kriss had been Asian, Chinese or African he would not have been attacked. He was chosen simply because he was white.

On seeing the two teenagers, Mr Shahid allegedly ordered the car, a stolen Mercedes, to stop. He then jumped out and began fighting.

He punched Kriss and bundled him into the back seat, where the boy was forced face down into the footwell with a knife at his back, it was alleged. The car then sped off with Mr Shahid allegedly shouting at Kriss, “I’m Baldy. No one f***s with me”, as he repeatedly punched the terrified schoolboy in the head and back.

The events were recalled yesterday in court by Zahid Mohammed, 22, a member of the gang who at an earlier trial in November 2004 pleaded guilty to charges of assaulting Kriss and attempting to pervert the course of justice. He was sentenced to five years in prison. His evidence at that trial also led to another gang member, Daanish Zahid, being convicted of Kriss’s abduction and murder and being given a life sentence.

Mohammed was released on parole this week and spent his first day of freedom giving evidence at the trial of the other alleged gang members, Imran Shahid, Mohammed Faisal Mushtaq, 27, and Zeeshan Shahid, 29.

The three men all deny charges of abducting and murdering Kriss in a racially aggravated attack.

It is alleged that they snatched Kriss, drove to Strathclyde Park, near Motherwell, then to Dundee, before returning to a deserted walkway by the Clyde in Glasgow, where they repeatedly stabbed the schoolboy, then doused him in petrol and set him alight.

The court was told that Mohammed left the gang at Strathclyde Park, about 45 minutes after the initial abduction, to return home in a taxi because he was tagged.

Asked by Mark Stewart, for the prosecution, what Kriss was doing as he was held prisoner, Mohammed said that he was silent. “He was scared, I could tell by the atmosphere,” he said.

He was then asked what he thought was going to happen to Kriss. “He probably would be done in.”

He said that the next day he met Mr Mushtaq and Zeeshan Shahid at a flat at Heriot Street in Pollokshields. He claimed that he asked Zeeshan Shahid what had happened.

Zeehan Shahid allegedly told him: “He took it quietly.”

Later, during cross-examination by counsel for the defence, it was revealed that Mohammed is to be given a new identity and a new home after the trial for co-operating with the police and appearing as a witness.

Donald Findlay, QC, acting for Mr Mushtaq, suggested to Mohammed that he was a habitual liar who had everything to gain by co-operating with the police, particularly as he may have supplied a knife that could later have been used as the murder weapon.

The trial continues.

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