Olympic star's plea to save his killer brother

They were siblings blessed with prodigious sporting talent - who chose very different paths.

While Germaine Mason aims for gold in London in 2012 having won a silver medal in the high jump at Beijing, his teenage brother Andre is beginning a life sentence for the murder of an innocent student.

Germaine escaped the ghetto to pursue his sporting dream, while Andre fell through the net and into a life of gangland violence.

Andre was still only 14 when he and a pack of youths "hunted" down and murdered Yasin Abdirahman, 22, stabbing him in the head and chest, one of the blows piercing his skull, the knife entering his brain.

Mr Abdirahman, who was studying pharmacy at London Metropolitan University, died of brain injuries eight days after the attack, close to his home in Southall, in September 2007.

His youngest attacker, found guilty of manslaughter, was just 12.

This week, Andre, now aged 16, was sentenced to life in prison and ordered to serve a minimum 13 years behind bars. Germaine, said to be "shocked" and "saddened" by the murder and his brother's part in it, had made a desperate plea to reduce the punishment. He wrote to the judge in the case, Peter Beaumont QC, insisting his brother had acted entirely out of character and appealing for as much clemency as a life sentence with a minimum term could permit. The boys' mother Carol felt she "had lost a son".

How Andre Mason went so badly wrong is a terrible tale of our times. He was born in London but went to live in Jamaica, his mother's birthplace, when he was two months old. Aged 13, he returned to the UK, winning trophies at 100m in junior competitions and with hopes to emulate his brother, who was already winning senior championships. Andre too dreamed of university. But back in London, where he attended Acton High School, he appears to have gone off the rails, lured in by a notorious local gang known as MDP - standing for "Murder Dem Pussies" or "Money, Drugs, Power" - known for its use of knives and guns.

Mr Abdirahman was picked upon either because he was mistaken for a member of a rival gang or else as the randomly chosen victim of an initiation test. In sentencing Mason at the Old Bailey this week, Judge Beaumont warned that the young killer had turned his back on his family.

"You come from a good family but the boy they describe stands oddly with the boy the evidence reveals," he said. "Even after your conviction you continue to regard your co-defendants and members of the MDP as a group of supportive friends."

Germaine, meanwhile, is in Jamaica training with great dedication for the athletics season ahead and with 2012 in his sights.

He fell in love with the high jump at the age of nine and by the age of 17, he was Jamaican champion. In 2002 he first met Usain Bolt, the world's fastest man.

The pair have developed a firm and long standing friendship and it was Bolt who was one of the first to congratulate Germaine on his Olympic silver medal.

A fall-out with coach Stephen Francis and persuasion from his mother led him in 2006 to take up the option offered by his dual nationality and represent Great Britain.

The 26-year-old, a member of the Birmingham-based Birchfield Harriers, still spends winter in warm weather training in Jamaica.

"I feel very British. Britain is my home and that's where it's going to be forever," he has said. "But I also feel at home in Jamaica." In contrast, his brother's home for the next 13 years will be the inside of a jail cell.