Twista Cheese unleashed chaos with a makeshift flamethrower inside a Birmingham gas station after threatening an employee and claiming to be a terrorist, leading to a nearly seven-year prison sentence handed down this week.
The 32-year-old drill rapper, born Omar Abdirizak, pleaded guilty to robbery and arson after a disturbing January 12 incident at Holloway Head Service Station.
The court heard that Twista Cheese became enraged over a cigarette payment policy and a fuel charge dispute, then escalated the situation in a terrifying way.
Prosecutor Manizja Latifi told Birmingham Crown Court the rapper shouted: “I’m a terrorist, I will kill you.”
According to surveillance footage, he fashioned a flamethrower from an aerosol can and a lighter, then directed the flames at the store clerk before climbing through the service window into the staff area.
The employee, cornered and visibly shaken, eventually handed over cigarettes to end the assault.
“I will burn this shop and you also,” Twista Cheese warned, according to Latifi.
After torching the Tango Ice Blast machine and a floor mat, he walked outside to the forecourt and continued setting fires before briefly returning to reignite the machine. Officers arrived roughly 10 minutes later to find the shopkeeper “visibly shaking and frightened.” The total damage neared $9,000.
Later that day, Twista Cheese called the police himself, identifying as “Satan” and telling officers, “Allah told me to do that.”
This wasn’t his first brush with the law. Two months after the gas station attack, he was sentenced to 20 weeks in jail for a TikTok video aimed at far-right figure Tommy Robinson.
In the August 2024 clip, which amassed more than 2 million views, the rapper mimicked gunfire with hand gestures while shouting “pow, pow, pow” and referencing “Muslims in every corner” and “artillery.”
During that trial, he told the court: “I am saying, if you come – self-defence. Even when I say ‘bam, bam, bam’, this is all entertainment.” But District Judge Wain ruled the video’s “natural meaning” was a threat involving firearms, not a musical performance.
Defense attorney Jasvir Mann said Twista Cheese suffers from PTSD linked to his past in Somalia, along with schizophrenia. Mann also said cannabis worsened his mental health and that his actions were “impulsive and stupid.”
“There is genuine remorse,” Mann told the court. “He is able to express that now in a sensible state of mind, which plainly he wasn’t in on the day in question.”
Recorder Sunil Khanna called the flamethrower “just as terrifying and could cause just as much harm as a blade or a firearm.” He also noted the rapper had expressed “terrorist ideologies” along with “misogynist and racist views” during interviews with probation officers.
Khanna labeled Twista Cheese a “dangerous offender” and warned of the “risk of catastrophic consequences to other people by those flames in the forecourt.”
The court sentenced him to six years and nine months in prison with an additional two-year license period on Tuesday.
Related