The killing of a Bangladeshi waiter in an Orkney restaurant was “a cold-blooded assassination” by a racially motivated killer, a court has been told.

The point-blank shooting of Shamsuddin Mahmood in 1994 at the Mumtaz Indian Tandoori restaurant in Kirkwall, Orkney, was a “savage, merciless and above all pointless” murder committed by a war hero, the High Court in Glasgow heard.

In his closing speech to the jury, Brian McConnachie, QC, for the prosecution, said that there was a “compelling circumstantial case” against Michael Ross, 29, a sniper with the Black Watch, who is accused of the murder, the first in Orkney for 25 years. Mr Ross was just 15 at the time.

“The pieces of evidence demonstrate beyond a shadow of doubt that Michael Ross murdered Shamsuddin Mahmood,” Mr McConnachie said.

He told the jury of ten women and five men: “It is like a jigsaw puzzle. The big picture is very, very simple. It is a murder committed by a masked gunman. What the evidence does is piece by piece remove the mask and when the mask is removed we are all staring at Michael Ross.”

He said that if they believed Mr Ross's alibi - that he was with friends elsewhere at the time of the shooting - then he could not have committed the murder. But he added: “The two people quite simply do not support his alibi in any way, shape or form.”

Mr McConnachie added: “Michael Ross is now 29. He is a sergeant in the Black Watch. We know he is a war hero, like everyone serving in the forces in that particular area. We know he has the same consideration for the black soldiers under his command as he does for the white ones.

“But quite simply, so what? This case is not about what Michael Ross has become, it is about what Michael Ross was in 1994.” Mr McConnachie said that there was evidence to show that Ross was a racist at the time, including claims that he had said that “all blacks should be shot”.

He told the court: “How unlucky can one person be? How unlucky can Michael Ross be that the person who carried out this murder bears such a striking similarity to him? This is a remarkable and extremely unfortunate coincidence for Michael Ross. But luck and coincidence had nothing to do with this.”

Donald Findlay, QC, for the defence, said Mr Ross had been wrongly portrayed as a racist, sexist and even a Nazi. He said that his client was a gentle, family man who served his country in Iraq with distinction. He told the jury: “The Crown say that the background is that there was a 15-year-old boy in Orkney, who was a racist to the extent that he walked into a restaurant and killed a complete stranger for no other reason than that he was black.”

Mr Findlay compared the Crown's claim of a “compelling and unanswerable case” against his client to the Government's claim about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Mr Ross, 29, of Inverness, denies murdering Mr Mahmood and attempting to defeat the ends of justice by changing his clothing and disposing of the weapon. The trial continues.

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