Fugitive’s sex victim: Why would church help him stay?
A SEX assault victim of the Clapham chemical attack fugitive says he was in Britain only because church leaders backed his asylum bid. The woman befriended Abdul Ezedi but said he pestered her for sex and exposed himself to her in 2017.
Meanwhile, another close friend of Ezedi – who last week allegedly threw a caustic liquid at a mother and her two children – described his conversion to Christianity as ‘a joke’.
The Mail revealed yesterday how a reference from a Baptist minister was crucial in persuading a 2020 immigration tribunal that the Afghan asylum seeker had changed religion, allowing him to stay in Britain.
Ezedi, 35, pleaded guilty and received 45 weeks’ jail, suspended for two years. His victim said she was appalled he was not jailed and was angered to learn he was allowed to stay in the UK. She told The Sun: ‘If he’d been jailed for attacking me then surely he would have been deported. But the failings didn’t end there because someone from a church gave him a reference so he could gain asylum.
‘ Who in their right mind thought that a good idea when he was on the Sex Offender Register? He’s a danger to women. That’s obvious to everyone.’
Last night it also emerged he had been convicted in 2018 for grabbing a woman’s buttocks and exposing himself at a bus stop.
Since Ezedi was named as wanted over last week’s attack, and news of his apparent conversion emerged, friends have said they know nothing about it, insisting he still conducted himself as a ‘good Muslim’.
An Iranian asylum seeker, 33, who was Ezedi’s colleague at a pizza shop in Tyneside, said the fugitive came from a ‘ very strict and devout’ Muslim family.
He added: ‘The idea he is now a Christian is a joke but he loves money and he loves his passport so maybe he did it for that reason.’
The friend added that Ezedi was badly affected by the murder of his sister in his native Afghanistan after she was killed in a robbery targeting the money he was sending home from his job as a pizza chef.
The now- retired minister from the Grange Road Baptist Church in Jarrow, Tyne and Wear, who is understood to have given the reference, said yesterday he did not wish to comment.
Scotland Yard last night said they believed he was being helped by others to evade the authorities.
‘His conversion is a joke’