The alleged crimes of Abdul Shokoor Ezedi have once again exposed the weakness of our asylum system, even if the conversion to Christianity is something that in principle would be welcome.
The asylum seeker currently, as far as we know, is on the loose and is the prime suspect in the Clapham alkaline attack which left a mother and two children with life-changing injuries.
He comes from Afghanistan and having had his asylum application rejected twice, went on to commit a sexual offence. He then supposedly converted to Christianity as a means of being granted asylum.
Ezedi was put on the sex offenders register for a decade and somehow this did not suffice to block his third asylum attempt
Rees-Mogg shared his thoughts on the Clapham chemical attack
GB News
Home Office guidelines state that sexual offences are enough to block asylum requests, but her 2020 immigration tribunal overruled this because a clergyman gave evidence that suggested he was: "wholly committed to Christianity."
New reports are suggesting this wasn't necessarily true.
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Apparently, Ezedi continued to buy only halal meat after his supposed 'conversion' and staff at a local shop described him as a 'good Muslim', despite Afghanistan being deemed unsafe for Ezedi to return.
Also, he reportedly had plans to return to the Taliban-ruled country to find a wife. Yet we're now being told that Ezedi's asylum status is irrelevant to this case.
Abdul Ezedi has been named as a suspectPAA number of commentators, including some members of Parliament, have suggested this crime is a problem of misogyny.
The Labour MP on Newsnight last week, a program on the BBC, said Ezedi's asylum status is "not really the issue."
A barrister who appeared on GB News last week, and will be joining me in a moment, said this: "It's not a crime that you can deal with just by having more people on the street because it happens so quickly. It's a crime of opportunity.
"What you need to deal with is the social causes of it. And these acid attacks are a crime of misogyny.
Met Police have urged the public to dial 999 if they spot Ezedi
PA"They're about men trying to exercise control over women by reducing them to their looks and then destroying those looks.
"It's only by addressing that that we're going to be able to address the the crime itself."
But this crime is unequivocally about asylum for one very simple reason. Ezedi should not have been in the country and if he had been expelled he could not have committed the crime.
The only reason the crime happened is because he was here. And it's this simple point that proves that it was the failure of the asylum system that allowed the crime to take place.
The Home Offices own guidelines suggest his criminal past was sufficient to reject his application, which means he ought not to be here. It is therefore, obviously the system's failure.
