An “evil” allotment holder who strangled an elderly widow with a lawnmower flex has been jailed for at least 19 years.

Rahim Mohammadi killed 80-year-old Lea Adri-Soejoko because he feared he would be thrown off his plot at Colindale Allotments in north London.

Adri-Soejoko, the allotment secretary, was found dead in a locked mower shed wearing Wellington boots and an apron.

Police had followed the sound of her ringing phone after her family raised the alarm last February.

“Volatile” Mohammadi, 42, from Hackney, was found guilty of her murder following a retrial at the Old Bailey.

Sentencing him to life with a minimum term of 19 years, Judge Richard Marks QC said: “How bitterly ironic that the place she loved so much – the allotment – was the place she met her death.”

Mohammadi, a regular opium user, killed Adri-Soejoko in a “violent loss of temper”.

The judge said: “It goes without saying although Lea was fit for her age, she was an elderly lady and as such confronted and attacked by you as she was, was vulnerable in the extreme.”

Ahead of Mohammadi’s sentencing, Adri-Soejoko’s family described her death as the actions of “one wicked individual”.

Describing the “torture” of having to sit through two trials, her son Mark said: “Some people make a play about the fact he is an immigrant or refugee, but it’s not to do with that.

“Where they come from has nothing to do with it. We are the children of immigrants. This is about the actions of one wicked individual.”

Tess Adri-Soejoko added: “Hatred is something you kind of rise to in a situation like this. I’m just glad that the truth has been revealed about him and who he truly is.

“I’m just glad he is not free and will not be able to do this to anybody else.”