'Grime' artist jailed for giving rapper false alibi
A musician who altered the dates of a recording session to try to help a fellow rapper get away with a murder plot has been jailed for three years.
Peter Okpohare, 22, from north London, also amended diary entries to create a false alibi for Kinsgley Ogundele over the attack on a pregnant 15-year-old.
In October 2008, Ogundele hatched a plot with Brandon Jolie, the father of the girl's unborn child, to kill her.
Okpohare, a "grime" artist from Islington, admitted perjury.
Jolie had feared the birth of the child could damage his music career and lured the girl to Regent's Canal in Islington, north London, where Ogundele was waiting.
He hit her with a metal pole, pushed her in the water and held her under, but her life was saved when Ogundele was chased off by a passer-by.
She eventually gave birth to a healthy boy.
Jolie, of Bow, east London, later admitted conspiracy to murder but Ogundele, of Romford, east London, denied the charge.
At his Old Bailey trial in December 2009, Ogundele was given a false alibi by Okpohare, who claimed he was with him in a recording studio at the time.
But the jury saw through the lies and convicted Ogundele, then 19, of conspiracy to murder. He was jailed for 18 years, while Jolie received a 14-year sentence.
Ogundele and Jolie were both 18 at the time they came up with the plot.
Sentencing Okpohare, Judge Paul Worsley said it was a "carefully thought out" false alibi.
"You produced diary entries to show that Mr Ogundele had been present with you at a recording studio and that some tracks contained his voice which had been recorded at that time.
"What you had done was to alter the dates on the recording."
The judge said the jury had been wrongly led to believe that Ogundele was present at a recording studio on the other side of London and could not have been trying to submerge the victim in Regent's Canal.
"It was only as a result of persistent police investigation that they were able to show that the material you produced, by way of your diaries and recordings, were false," he added.
Okpohare, known as "Germz", will begin his three-year jail term later this year after completing a separate sentence for drug-dealing.