The Clapham chemical attack suspect was granted asylum despite totally bungling a Christianity test.
Abdul Ezedi, 35, is suspected of dousing his former girlfriend, a mother-of-two, with a corrosive chemical in a harrowing attack on her and her young children in Clapham in January.
The former asylum seeker was found dead in the River Thames in February after a huge nationwide manhunt to find the convicted sex offender.
Now it’s been revealed that he was granted asylum despite the Home Office warning that he had failed a Christianity test and was happy to “use religion for his own ends”.
An immigration judge accepted Abdul Ezedi’s account of events and that his conversion was genuine even though he could not answer basic questions about his new found religion, reports The Telegraph.
In a Home Office interview, he insisted he had read the bible every day for three years.
But when Ezedi – an Afghan who came to the UK illegally in 2016 – was asked what the Old Testament was about he replied: “Jesus Christ.”
Asked to name Jesus’s main followers, he said: “Simon, Peter, Jacob, Andrew…12 people, Disciples.”
When questioned about what God created on the third day, he answered: “Good Friday and Easter Sunday and Resurrection Day.”
Documents also showed that he was able to keep attending his baptist church under a special safeguarding contract requiring that he was supervised at all times.
Ezedi was eventually granted asylum by an immigration tribunal judge on his third appeal in November 2020. He claimed he had converted to Christianity and would be persecuted if he returned to his native Afghanistan.
A judge who rejected his asylum appeal in February 2017 said he had fabricated accounts of his background that created a “wholly unreliable and inconsistent” story.
He had given differing accounts of how his brother died and changed his story about whether he was a Sunni or Shia Muslim. Ezedi also claimed he had never worked in the UK but had been a car mechanic.
Home Office officials told the tribunal that they did not accept his conversion was “genuine and long-lasting” and was prepared to “use religion for his own ends”.
However, immigration Judge O’Hanlon said his dishonesty about some aspects of his life did not “automatically mean that his evidence in relation to his claimed conversion could not be believed”.
Evidence from Rev Roy Merrin, of Grange Road Baptist Church, told the tribunal that Ezedi had started attending his church in February 2016, a month after he arrived in the UK, and continued to do so for more than four years.
A 2019 Baptists Together contract set out “agreed boundaries for the welfare and safety” of Ezedi and other worshippers at the Newcastle church.
