Forty barge migrants convert to Christianity
Laws around role of church in asylum claims may be tightened in wake of Clapham attack
FORTY asylum seekers on the Bibby Stockholm are converting to Christianity amid growing fears that migrants are claiming to have changed their religion in order to stay in the country.
Nearly one in seven of the 300 migrants on the barge in Portland, Dorset, is attending a church under the supervision of a faith leader, according to a church elder.
The disclosure comes amid a row over the role of churches in supporting the conversion to Christianity of migrants such as Abdul Ezedi, the suspected Clapham chemical attacker. Ezedi was granted asylum on that basis, despite having been convicted of two sex offences three years earlier.
Today, James Cleverly, the Home Secretary, is expected to receive an initial report on the case, as government sources questioned whether it was “really possible to credibly substantiate the validity of a religious conversion”.
Mr Cleverly is expected to consider whether legal changes are needed to ensure tighter scrutiny of asylum seekers’ conversion claims and to enable the automatic deportation of convicted foreign criminals such as Ezedi, who received a two-year suspended sentence for sexual assault and exposure before being granted leave to remain in the UK.
As the manhunt for Ezedi entered its fourth day, Scotland Yard offered a reward of £20,000 for information leading to the arrest of the 35-year-old.
He is alleged to have left a 31-year-old mother with “life-changing injuries” and hurt her two daughters, aged eight and three, when he attacked them with a corrosive chemical in south-west London. Ministers are understood to be concerned at the way church support for Ezedi’s conversion was critical to apparently persuading an immigration tribunal judge to back his appeal for asylum, despite the Home Office twice refusing his request to stay.
Last week, friends of Ezedi told The
Telegraph he was a “good Muslim” who bought half a Halal sheep every fortnight, despite his apparent conversion.
A government source said: “There are clearly general questions about whether it is really possible to credibly substantiate the validity of a religious conversion, particularly where that opinion might be a main defence and carry very important implications.”
The number of asylum seekers claiming to have converted is not published by the Home Office, but David Rees, a church elder and education consultant, told BBC radio’s Sunday programme that 40 asylum seekers on the Bibby Stockholm had converted or were in the process of becoming Christians.
“Local faith leaders have visited the barge and work with the council and the barge management,” he said, adding that the migrants had either converted in their home countries or on Christian Alpha or other courses in the UK.
The Alpha course was taken by Emad al-swealmeen, the Liverpool bomber. The Iraqi asylum seeker blew himself up outside a maternity hospital in 2021, four years after his confirmation at the city’s cathedral.
Mr Rees said he was confident that all the 40 Bibby Stockholm migrants were undergoing genuine conversions.
However, Tim Loughton, a member of the home affairs committee and a former minister, said he was concerned that Christian conversion had become a scam, claiming there were cases in which some asylum seekers had got crucifix tattoos to reinforce their claims.
“We have got to have a much more rigorous scrutiny process for those claiming to have converted,” he said.
The Home Office said caseworkers were trained to be able to establish the credibility of claims around religious beliefs so that protection was only granted to those in genuine need.
It is believed caseworkers recom- mended that Ezedi’s application be rejected under rules that anyone on the sex offenders’ register should be barred.
However, it is understood the tribunal judge ruled that this was outweighed by the risk of religious persecution if, as a Christian convert, he were returned to Afghanistan.
Officials for the Church of England said they could find no record of support for his asylum application. A spokesman for the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales suggested it held no central conversion records.
‘You can’t separate the failures of our asylum system with the fact this bloke was in the country’
GILLIAN KEEGAN has come under fire for claiming a chemical attack allegedly carried out by an Afghan refugee given leave to remain in the UK despite being convicted of a sexual offence was “not really about asylum”.
The Education Secretary was criticised for her remarks as police continued the manhunt for Abdul Ezedi, who is suspected of carrying out the vicious attack on a woman and children in Clapham, south London, last week.
Ezedi arrived illegally in the UK from Afghanistan on the back of a lorry in 2016 and was denied asylum twice, but was granted leave to remain in 2021 or 2022 after claiming he had converted to Christianity.
A 31-year-old woman believed to be known to him was attacked with a corrosive alkaline substance, along with her two children, and remains “very poorly” and sedated in hospital.
The injuries to her daughters, aged three and eight, are “not likely to be life-changing”.
Calls to tighten British asylum laws have grown after it emerged that Ezedi had been convicted of sexual assault and exposure in 2018.
Asked how he had been allowed to stay in the country, Ms Keegan told Sky’s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips: “My understanding is the Home Secretary has asked for all the details.
“But this is not really about asylum – this is about obviously the attack on a mother and her children, which was horrific and obviously impacted others as well, some people who went to her assistance and the emergency services.”
When Mr Phillips said the case was “obviously” about flaws in the asylum system, Ms Keegan accused him of “conflating” the attack and the alleged attacker’s leave to remain in the UK.
“Clearly, what we say is anybody who commits crimes is not able to stay in this country, so if you have a sentence of more than 12 months you’re not allowed to stay if you have a criminal record,” she said. “We don’t want to have people in this country who have criminal records, and there are various steps, actually, in the various Bills.
“The Nationality and Borders Bill tightened it up and the new Bill has tightened it up again. But in this particular case he was granted [asylum].”
Sir John Hayes, the chairman of the Common Sense Group of Tory MPS, said: “The two issues are intimately associated.
“You can’t separate the failures of our asylum system with the fact that this bloke was in this country. They are, by their nature, linked – you can’t separate them.
“It’s no use saying these things aren’t linked – of course they’re linked. He was here as a successful asylum seeker.”
Richard Tice, the leader of the Rightwing Reform UK party, said the Clapham attack “is all about the Tories’ total failure to stop illegal immigration, failure to deport foreign criminals and failure to protect British citizens”.
“For a Tory minister to deny this shows how out of touch they are,” he added.
Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s former chief adviser at No 10, wrote on social media: “Tories, like Labour, support an ‘asylum’ system that prioritises foreign sex criminals over British voters and taxpayers.
“Both parties think attacks like this are a price worth paying to stay in the European Convention on Human Rights, both parties are supported by the old media, old academia and old Whitehall.”
The row came as Sir Chris Bryant, a shadow Labour minister, suggested that Ezedi should not have been granted asylum in the UK.
He told Sky News: “In the main, on the face of it, if everything that we have been told is true then it seems absolutely extraordinary that the British people should be put at such risk from this person.
“Of course it’s something we might need to look at.”