04 Culture

The Sudanese asylum seeker charged in connection with the attempted beheading in Belfast on Monday was granted refugee status in Britain through a fast-track Home Office process that avoided a full face-to-face interview.

The Daily Mail reported on Thursday that the 30-year-old suspect, identified as Hadi Alodid, was allowed to remain in the U.K. after completing a 10-page questionnaire under the Streamlined Asylum Process, a system introduced under the then-Conservative government to help clear tens of thousands of unresolved asylum cases.

Alodid’s case was reportedly handled under the scheme, which was set up as ministers sought to reduce a backlog of 92,000 claims. The process was overseen by then-home secretary Suella Braverman and then-immigration minister Robert Jenrick, both of whom have since joined Reform UK, the party topping national polling in Britain.

According to the tabloid newspaper, the fast-track programme was known inside parts of the Home Office as the “grant 0factory,” allowing applicants from countries with very high asylum grant rates to have their claims processed without the usual in-person interview.

It initially applied to selected nationalities and was later extended to Sudanese applicants in June 2023. Alodid had travelled from Dublin to Belfast by bus in February of that year and was granted a five-year refugee visa in September 2023.

The Streamlined Asylum Process also covered applicants from countries including Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Libya, and Yemen, despite significant security concerns surrounding particular entrants from those countries.

Migration Watch UK, which campaigns for stricter border controls, warned at the time that the scheme was a “dangerous folly” and an “asylum amnesty in all but name.”

A Conservative source told the Daily Mail that the policy had been driven by then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak despite internal resistance at the Home Office. “The Home Office at the time did not want to do the fast-track scheme, but Rishi forced it on them,” the source said.

The revelation that the suspect was offered an easy ride into Britain prompted an angry response from Restore Britain leader Rupert Lowe, who said Jenrick and Braverman had “serious questions to answer” over the system introduced while they were in government.

“This is traitorous,” he wrote on X, before calling for the asylum system to be abolished, mass deportations, and a referendum on the death penalty for offenders who carry out extreme knife attacks in Britain.

Alodid has now been charged with the attempted murder of Stephen Ogilvie, 44. The victim reportedly lost his left eye and suffered wounds to his neck and back.

Maitiu Mag Tighearnan, a 32-year-old father, has been praised after intervening in the attack with a hurling stick. Tighearnan said he had arrived at the scene by chance and acted to “protect a young lad.”

“This was late at night, and so we thought we better go and break it up,” he said. “He shouted to me that the man attacking the other had a knife and to get something to help. At this point, I thought someone was going to lose their life.”

“Instinct took over and I ran over and I smashed this guy over the head with a hurling stick,” he said. “Right on the flat side, about three times. As hard as I could.”

“I just hope the victim pulls through and manages to recover as best he can,” he added.

The Daily Mail also reported that Ogilvie had survived a horrific attack in Scotland 25 years earlier. In 2001, he was tortured and set on fire in a flat in Livingston by drug dealer David McLeave, who was later jailed for 14 years by the High Court in Edinburgh.

According to the report, Ogilvie had been given the drug GHB, burned with a cigarette, stripped, doused in aftershave, and set alight while unconscious. He fled back to Northern Ireland after the attack and later reported the ordeal to authorities.

Monday’s attack sparked major unrest in Belfast, where homes and cars were set alight after hundreds of people took to the streets on both Tuesday and Wednesday night. Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMOs) — properties whereby several unrelated individuals share facilities, a type of arrangement frequently used by the Home Office to accommodate asylum seekers — were targeted in attacks.