A jury has found Tiwi Islands man Brendan Kantilla guilty of murdering 23-year-old university student Isfaqur Rahman following a six-day trial in the Northern Territory’s Supreme Court in Darwin.<\/p>\n
Warning: This story contains content that may be distressing to some readers.<\/p>\n
Mr Rahman, an international student from Bangladesh, was asleep in his bed at a share house in the Darwin suburb of Millner on May 3, 2023, when Kantilla struck him in the head with a paving stone and then with a fire extinguisher.<\/p>\n
Following around three hours of deliberations, the jury returned a unanimous verdict of guilty to murder on Monday.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Members of the NT’s Bangladeshi community, including two of Isfaqur Rahman’s friends, were in court for the verdict on Monday. (ABC News: Pete Garnish)<\/p>\n
Bangladeshi community ‘relieved’ at result<\/p>\n
Several members of the NT’s Bangladeshi community, including two of Mr Rahman’s friends, were seated in the courtroom as the verdict was delivered.<\/p>\n
Chowdhury Sadaruddin, who was at Mr Rahman’s bedside when his life support was turned off, said he felt relieved at the result.<\/p>\n
“Obviously it’s a long process, but there’s a closing now which is for the family. But [we’re] just relieved, our whole community is feeling relieved,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I hope it never happened, but I hope now the family will have some peace.”<\/p>\n
President of the Bangladesh Association of the NT, Noorun Salma, said while nothing could bring Mr Rahman back, they were pleased with the result.<\/p>\n
“We don’t want any more loss in our community and are very happy with the judgement today.,” she said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Noorun Salma says the local Bangladeshi community is pleased with the guilty verdict. (ABC News: Pete Garnish)<\/p>\n
Jury rejects argument of mental impairment<\/p>\n
Kantilla, who was 29 at the time of Mr Rahman’s death, pleaded not guilty to murder but guilty to the alternative charge of manslaughter.<\/p>\n
Over the course of the trial, Kantilla pursued the partial defence of diminished responsibility, with his legal team arguing he was substantially mentally impaired at the time of the attack.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
An NT Supreme Court jury rejected the argument that Brendan Kantilla was substantially mentally impaired at the time of the attack. (Supplied: Facebook)<\/p>\n
In convicting Kantilla of murder, the jury rejected the defence’s argument that Kantilla was not able to control himself or fully comprehend the seriousness of his actions.<\/p>\n
Instead, the jury found Kantilla intended to kill or seriously harm Mr Rahman.<\/p>\n
Kantilla ate from fridge as victim lay bleeding<\/p>\n
The court heard while Kantilla and Mr Rahman were not known to each other, they had a fleeting interaction just hours before Mr Rahman’s death.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Md Isfaqur Rahman had moved to Darwin from Bangladesh for his studies.\u00a0 (Supplied: Bangladeshi Student Association)<\/p>\n
The student had returned home with his roommate, Tm Safi Sami, late at night after working as a cleaner when Kantilla asked the pair for a cigarette.<\/p>\n
While giving evidence early in the trial, Mr Sami told the court when they said they didn’t have one, Kantilla swore at them and they swore back.<\/p>\n
Kantilla then returned to Mr Rahman’s house on Trower Road, entered through the back door and into Mr Rahman’s room where the student was asleep.<\/p>\n
Kantilla then struck Mr Rahman with a paver, rendering him unconscious and bleeding.<\/p>\n
The jury was shown a recorded police interview following Kantilla’s arrest in which he demonstrated how he “slammed” the victim’s head with the paver.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Phillip Boulten SC represented Brendan Kantilla throughout the six-day trial. (ABC News: Peter Garnish)<\/p>\n
In the interview, Kantilla can be heard describing the strike as a “one, big hit” and saying Mr Rahman “nearly passed away from me”.<\/p>\n
In his closing address to the jury, crown prosecutor Lloyd Babb SC described Kantilla’s actions as “deliberate”, “premeditated” and “extremely violent”.<\/p>\n
“You might remember [Kantilla] indicating in his interview with police that he went through the fridge and ate some food and took his time shopping amongst the possessions at the property,” Mr Babb said.<\/p>\n
“This was not a rushed, impulsive series of actions but rather a chillingly premeditated slowly, executed and controlled attack.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Lloyd Babb SC said Kantilla’s actions on the night of the attack were “chillingly premeditated”. (ABC News: Michael Franchi)<\/p>\n
Neuropsychologists disagree over Kantilla’s mental state<\/p>\n
The court heard two days of evidence from two neuropsychologists \u2014 Peter Ashkar and Laura Scott \u2014 who gave conflicting evidence regarding the extent of Kantilla’s cognitive impairment.<\/p>\n
Both witnesses interviewed Kantilla while he was prison awaiting trial and conducted psychometric testing to determine Kantilla’s mental and cognitive capacity.<\/p>\n
Ms Scott told the court it was “more likely than not” Kantilla had a mild intellectual disability while Dr Ashkar said he “emphatically” disagreed.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Md Isfaqur Rahman died at his share house in Millner in May 2023. (ABC News: Hamish Harty)<\/p>\n
Dr Ashkar told the court Kantilla was “functioning at borderline \u2026 or at an impaired level in most areas of his intellectual and cognitive function”.<\/p>\n
Despite this, Dr Ashkar said this did not “preclude \u2014 nor reduce in any way \u2014 his capacity to distinguish right and wrong, and seriously wrong behaviour”,<\/p>\n
In the NT, murder carries a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 20 years.<\/p>\n
Kantilla will return to the Supreme Court for sentencing later this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A jury has found Tiwi Islands man Brendan Kantilla guilty of murdering 23-year-old university student Isfaqur Rahman following…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":320801,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[180746,5249,43,180751,180749,180750,180752,180747,180748,44,1098,180745,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-320800","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-brendan-kantilla","9":"tag-darwin","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-international-student-darwin","12":"tag-international-student-killed","13":"tag-international-student-killed-darwin","14":"tag-md-isfaqur-rahman","15":"tag-murder-trial-darwin","16":"tag-murder-trial-nt","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-nt","19":"tag-supreme-court-nt","20":"tag-top-news","21":"tag-top-stories","22":"tag-topnews","23":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/320801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}