I found myself nodding in agreement with much of what Nigel Farage had to say about law and order this week, but as an old-school detective who now writes about crime and policing matters, I could foresee some issues that would need to be ironed out well before 2029, when Mr Farage may just win the keys to Number 10.
His plan to send foreign prisoners back to their home countries to serve their sentences makes a delicious soundbite, and it would be great to free up more than 10,000 prison spaces, but would these convicts serve any time inside when they land back home, and could we negotiate agreements with Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria and any other troubled country where these offenders may originate from?
I can hear the leftie human rights lawyers rubbing their hands together with glee as I write this, and let’s face it, they already earn enough money out of our taxes as it is.
And even if such criminals do get to serve time back home, with our pathetic and virtually non-existent border controls, what’s to stop such a criminal from making their way back to Britain?
Take the appalling case of Emal Kochai, an Afghan who came to the UK in 2010 when he was apparently aged just 15.
As an unaccompanied minor, he was fortunate enough to be fostered by a couple in Berkshire, before being moved into the home of another set of foster parents in Hungerford.
Thames Valley Police/Getty Images
| The blood-curdling case of the Afghan rapist makes me question this tough talk on migration - Peter BleksleyHe went to school, and later to college, where he studied English as a second language. He created a Facebook account, which still exists to this day, where the only book of interest listed is the Holy Quran, and he speaks of being a proud Muslim. He also posted a poem, of which this is an excerpt:
My Afghan race I will not disgrace,
My Afghan blood flows hot & true,
My Afghan Family I will stand by you,
thru thick & thin till the day we die…
Disgustingly, in 2014, Kochai was found guilty of the rape of a 12-year-old girl in a house in Reading. He was jailed for nine years. Clearly, in this case, diversity was not our strength.
He was released after serving only half of his sentence, before being deported back to Afghanistan in 2019. Any reasonable person might have expected that to be the very last we would hear of this piece of garbage, but alas it was not.
In March 2023, journalists from The Times found Kochai in a migrant camp near Dunkirk. Once again, he had left his homeland and made his way to the French coast, where he had already tried to return to the UK on a small boat, but it had been punctured by French Police.
Kochai was undeterred, telling the journalists: “I will never give up trying to get to the UK. I have been in France for three months and we don’t get anything. In the UK I can get education, a job and a house.”
I’ve done some research recently into this rapist who should still be on the Sex Offenders Register, but unfortunately, I cannot tell you where he is now.
We are rapidly approaching the 100,000 mark for illegal migrants who have arrived on small boats between the time journalists spoke to Kochai and today, so there is a very real possibility that he has made it to our shores.
I hope you can find it in your soul to forgive me for bringing such a gloomy story to you, but I do so in order to highlight that political intentions can be good, very good in fact, but unless the detail, the complexities, and the wider issues are thought through and tackled, then a soundbite will only ever remain just that, attractive words that are doomed to fail.
Over to you, Mr Farage…