The Belfast knife attack suspect was granted asylum under a fast-track application scheme due to his nationality, it has emerged.
Hadi Alodid, 30, only had to complete a UK Home Office questionnaire rather than attend a face-to-face interview because of the “security and humanitarian situation” in Sudan, reports RTE.
He travelled from Sudan to Paris, then on to Dublin, before catching a bus to Belfast in February 2023, and was granted refugee status with five years’ leave to remain in the UK until 2028.
The streamlined asylum process scheme — introduced under the previous Conservative government and no longer in operation — was used to process applications from adults from Afghanistan, Eritrea, Libya, Sudan, Syria and Yemen without a personal interview, in an effort to clear a backlog. Claimants from those countries had a grant rate of “over 95%,” meaning a less rigorous process was followed to save caseworkers’ time, reports RTE.
Ulster Unionist Party leader Jon Burrows, speaking after his party met UK Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn at Stormont, said there was “an issue” in how the alleged attacker arrived in Northern Ireland.
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“There is a vulnerability that you can come from a country in Africa, land in France, then make your way to Dublin, and then end up in Belfast, and the first the authorities knew about that is some time later,” he said, while also stressing that his party values lawful migrants and stands “four square behind the PSNI” in tackling disorder, reports RTE.
Scottish First Minister John Swinney warned of a “rising tide of the spread of hateful rhetoric” in Scotland, telling Holyrood that “Scotland is a welcoming country” and attacking Reform UK for “stirring up hatred,” after tensions flared in Glasgow and Greenock following the Belfast attack, with police saying members of the public were “attacked because of the colour of their skin.”
In the Dáil, Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín accused the Government of creating an “information vacuum” over the suspect’s movements in Ireland, asking how long he was in the jurisdiction, whether he applied for asylum, and whether his background was checked, saying: “The world is asking these questions, and all we have is dead air from this Government,” reports RTE.
In response, Minister for Enterprise Peter Burke said he would not “lean into people’s fears” and said the Government had reacted strongly on immigration by signing the EU migration pact, which comes into force imminently, pledging to work towards a “firm, fair immigration system” that would be “hard on traffickers and smugglers,” reports RTE.
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