Former immigration minister Robert Jenrick has torn into “naive” vicars for helping potentially dangerous asylum seekers exploit loopholes in the system. Mr Jenrick’s warning comes after it was revealed the suspected wanted in connection to acid attack south London – that injured a mum, her two daughters and nine others – had his asylum application rejected twice.
However after a priest vouched for him that he had converted to Christianity, it was deemed his new faith made it too dangerous to deport the asylum seeker back to his home country of Afghanistan.
Abdul Shokoor Ezedi is now wanted in connection with the shocking alkali attack on a woman in Clapham South on Wednesday.
This morning the senior Tory MP blasted Britain’s “dangerously broken” asylum system.
Mr Jenrick added that while this case raises “grave concerns” they aren’t “a great surprise to me”.
He told the Today Programme: “The argument I’ve been making for a long time is that our asylum system is dangerously broken and needs fundamental reform”.
“It appears from what little we know of this case, that this is in an individual whose asylum or humanitarian protection in the UK was granted by a tribunal – so probably by a judge, rather than Home Office officials – despite the fact that he had been convicted of a sexual offence and on the basis of evidence which we shall have to see may well be spurious or insubstantial, such as this suggestion that he had converted to Christianity.”
He urged the Home Secretary to conduct a “detailed review” of the case.
The former immigration minister warned that Britain is now “regularly” seeing cases of asylum seekers “making spurious claims to have converted to Christianity, aided and abetted by often well-meaning but naive, vicars and priests”.
He warned it is just one example of “how broken the system is”, and is a further example of the need for Britain to get migrants deported to Rwanda and end interference by foreign human rights courts.
Taking to Twitter/X after his interview, Mr Jenrick put it simply: “Detain and remove illegal migrants. End the merry go round of spurious individual claims. Put the safety of the British public first”.
A 31-year-old woman is now feared blind after threw what it reported to be oven cleaner in their faces from a metal coffee cup.
Suspect Abdul Ezedi had traced the mum to the two-star Clapham South Belvedere Hotel, where she was staying in a local council-provided room.
He is alleged to have snatched the youngest child, aged three, and put her in the back of a white car before the mum and older daughter attempted to intervene. It was then that the substance, claimed by The Sun to be oven cleaner, was reportedly thrown at them.
This morning a Government minister refused to be drawn on the specific details of the horrific attack, but said it showed precisely why Rishi Sunak is so determined to fix Britain’s asylum process and get flights to Rwanda started.
Families minister David Johnston conceded that the known details of this case will “understandably concern every member of the British public”.
“What I do know is the British public have been very frustrated by hearing these sorts of stories over a number of years.
“This is why this Government is so determined to end the asylum merry-go-round because we’ve seen a number of cases reported in the media where the British public do not understand why certain people are able to continually challenge asylum decisions and often end up successfully claiming asylum having been rejected.
“That’s very much what the Safety of Rwanda Bill is all about, trying to end the asylum merry-go-round that we’ve seen.”
