A vicious thug was jailed for life today (Tues) fo

A vicious thug was jailed for life today (Tues) for repeatedly kicking a prone old soldier so hard his spleen ruptured.

Shocked tourists, including a 15-year-old schoolgirl, in London’s Leicester Square watched as Desmond Baiden delivered a flurry of kicks to the helpless 61-year-old’s head and abdomen.

Southwark Crown Court heard ‘mercifully’ victim Ian Goulding remembered little of the violence – as a diabetic, he had already undergone a hypoglyceamic attack.

A top judge told 26-year-old Baiden he had to impose a mandatory life sentence under ‘two strikes and your out’ legislation.

In March, Baiden, of Maida Vale, west London, was found guilty of causing grievous bodily harm with intent on September 26, last year.

The court heard he had a previous conviction for wounding with intent.

Sentencing, Judge George Bathurst-Norman said: ‘This was a horrific
attack on an elderly man who was suffering at that time from a hypoglyceamic attack.

‘You finished up him so hard his spleen was ruptured.

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The judge said anyone committing such offences would find themselves in prison for a very long time ‘but in your case the fact you have a previous conviction for wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, means you have a sentence of life imprisonment.

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He said otherwise Baiden would have been jailed for five years, reduced a year for the time he had spent in custody and the fact he suffered mental problems.

But the judge said the defendant would not be released until the parole board was satisfied he no longer had to be held in custody ‘for the protection of the public.

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He added: ‘If you are released you will be subject to licence for the rest of your life.

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Mr Goulding, from Ickenham, Middlesex, a former infantryman had travelled into central London to support a march by veterans of the Parachute Regiment – the crack Red Berets protesting against the removal of the winged horse Pegasus as their emblem.

Afterwards he joined other soldiers in a pub to swap stories and later went for something to eat but finding a favourite steak house closed wandered to Leicester Square and unfortunately underwent a diabetic episode.

Baiden claimed he was acting in self-defence when the older man approached him waving his arms and making racist remarks.

But Mr Jacob Hallam, prosecuting, said: ‘However, that account does not lie easily with kicking a prone man regardless, that is not self-defence.

‘And that is all the more the case with three kicks to a man in his sixties lying on the floor.

‘That is not self-defence but a case of deliberate assault.

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ends