A neo-Nazi student who was jailed for a minimum of 40 years for murdering an 82-year-old man and plotting explosions near mosques has died in a high-security jail.
Pavlo Lapshyn, 37, stabbed Mohammed Saleem in Birmingham in April 2013 — five days after arriving in the UK.
Lapshyn later planted three home-made bombs near mosques in the West Midlands in planned racist attacks.
He died today at HMP Wakefield, the Category A jail in West Yorkshire, the Prison Service has confirmed.
A local in the West Midlands told Metro: ‘He absolutely spread fear through the community. And obviously we had to contain it, because what you didn’t want is, what he wanted — to start a race war.
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‘I think maybe he was doing little testers at the little mosque, because the last one that he did was in a mosque in Wolverhampton, and it was, it would have been horrific. It was a nail bomb that detonated all across the car park. But the clocks went back so the Friday prayer time had changed by an hour. It could have been so much worse.
‘There were lots of questions we had that we didn’t get answered because none of it actually made any sense.
‘Because if he was going to commit race wars why would you go to the smallest mosques in the back streets of Birmingham, when he was staying on site opposite one of the biggest mosques in Birmingham?’
Lapshyn, from Dnipropetrovsk in Ukraine, had been living in Birmingham while on a temporary work placement in the city.
He stabbed Mr Saleem three times as the father-of-seven was walking home from prayers at Small Heath mosque on April 29.
He also stamped on the head of his victim, who had 22 grandchildren and was a fortnight away from becoming a grandfather again.
Six weeks later, Lapshyn planted his first explosive device beside gates outside the Aisha mosque in Walsall.
He detonated another seven days later on a roundabout near Wolverhampton Central Mosque, although no one noticed for three weeks.
His final and most dangerous bomb, packed with hundreds of nails, sent debris flying across a car park close to Kanzul Iman Masjid mosque in Tipton on July 12. The attack failed to cause casualties only because morning prayers had been put back an hour, delaying the arrival of up to 1,000 worshippers, the Old Bailey heard.
He was caught after police recognised his Delcam work clothes on CCTV footage. At his home, officers found material for further bombs, including three mobile phones used as detonators, and white supremacist literature.
Lapshyn admitted to police that he had acted alone and ‘wanted to increase racial conflict’. He said he targeted mosques ‘because they are not white and I am white’.
In October 2013, he was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 40 years for the murder by a judge at the Old Bailey.
The killer’s tariff included 12 years for offences under the Explosives Substances Act and 12 years for offences under the Terrorism Act.
A Prison Service spokesperson said today: ‘This was an abhorrent crime and our thoughts remain with Mr Saleem’s friends and family.
‘Pavlo Lapshyn died on 23 September 2025 at HMP Wakefield.
‘As with all deaths in custody, the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman will investigate.’
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