Churches ‘undermining asylum system’
Home Office warning comes after files disclose chemical attacker was allowed to stay despite lying about his past
CHURCHES risk undermining the integrity of the asylum system, Home Office sources have warned, as it emerged the Clapham chemical attacker was allowed to remain in Britain despite lying and failing a Christianity test.
Immigration files published yesterday showed convicted sex offender Abdul Ezedi was granted asylum after he claimed he had converted to Christianity and his application was backed by a Baptist church minister.
The minister’s evidence was critical in persuading an immigration judge to allow his application despite a Home Office warning that he was “using religion for his own ends” after he gave incorrect answers to questions about Christianity. Evidence presented in court also showed that he had lied persistently about his background.
A source close to James Cleverly said the Home Secretary had called a meeting with the “vast majority” of Christian churches following Ezedi’s death.
The source said: “We wanted to relay the potential damage to those churches of being seen, rightly or wrongly, as acting against the integrity of our asylum system, where Christian conversion has been brought up at appeal. In this case, the consequences were appalling.
“That reputational risk is only amplified by the fact some who denied knowledge of Ezedi at the time had in fact known of him within their church, and had supported and vouched for him.”
Ezedi, a 35-year-old Afghan national, had twice been refused asylum by the Home Office, and was considered so dangerous by the Baptist Church that it drew up a “safeguarding contract” for the safety of parishioners over his sex assault and exposure convictions.
He came to the UK illegally in 2016 and died in the Thames while on the run after attacking a 31-year-old mother and her two daughters with a corrosive substance near Clapham Common, south London, on Jan 31.
Ezedi was granted asylum by an immigration tribunal judge on his third appeal in 2020 after he claimed he had converted to Christianity and would be persecuted if he returned to Afghanistan.
Tim Loughton, a member of the home affairs select committee, called for a full investigation. “The details of this shocking case go to underline the suspicions we have had all along that migrants are playing the Christianity card to game the system,” he said.
“But there is a worrying disconnect here between the Home Office, which looks at these cases rigorously and decides there is not a credible claim, then on the same evidence tribunals seem to think they know better and overrule the detailed work that the Home Office has already done.
“Clearly, the system is not working properly. We need to have a full investigation into why it is that, in too many cases, tribunals think they know better and are overruling the experts in the immigration service.” The files show that Ezedi persistently lied about his background, including about whether he had worked in the UK before, and was found by the asylum judge to have “not been honest in several aspects of his account”. The Home Office also told the tribunal that Ezedi had been unable to explain the reasons for his conversion or demonstrate a clear understanding of Christian principles. Asked what the Old Testament was about, he replied: “Jesus Christ.”
Despite concerns, Judge William O’hanlon allowed Ezedi’s appeal on asylum and human rights grounds, also citing the evidence of Baptist minister Rev Roy Merrin, who backed Ezedi.
THE moment that should have rung alarm bells over Abdul Ezedi’s asylum claim as a “Christian” was when he said that the Old Testament was about “Jesus Christ”.
The Home Office warned that he had failed a Christianity test and was “using religion for his own ends” yet the Clapham chemical attacker was granted asylum, newly released documents show.
An immigration judge accepted Ezedi’s conversion as genuine even though he could not answer basic questions about Christianity and had repeatedly lied about his background.
Ezedi did not know which Testament featured Jesus in a series of blunders during an interview to test the validity of his conversion.
The documents also reveal Ezedi, 35, a convicted sex offender, was allowed to continue attending his adopted baptist church under a special safeguarding contract requiring that he was supervised at all times.
Ezedi, an Afghan who came to the UK illegally in 2016, died in the River Thames while on the run after attacking a 31-year-old mother and her two daughters with a corrosive substance near Clapham Common on Jan 31.
He was granted asylum by an immigration tribunal judge on his third appeal in November 2020 after he claimed he had converted to Christianity and would be persecuted if he returned to Afghanistan.
The documents detailing his asylum claims were revealed after a submission by The Telegraph and other media to the judicial office for the anonymity of his immigration case to be lifted.
They will raise questions over the need for tougher checks by churches and the Government to prevent migrants falsely claiming to have changed their religion in order to stay in the UK.
The documents show that Ezedi persistently lied about his background. A judge who rejected his asylum appeal in February 2017 ruled that his accounts of his background that created a “wholly unreliable and inconsistent” picture that was “lacking credibility”.
He gave differing accounts of how his brother died, changed his story about whether he was a Sunni or Shia Muslim and claimed he had never worked in the UK when he had had a job as a car mechanic, according to the documents. He also claimed that he had depression and suicidal thoughts, and that he had been shot by the Taliban.
Ezedi only said he had converted to Christianity after his first asylum appeal had been rejected in 2017, claiming he had “forgotten” to tell officials about his alleged attendance at Grange Road Baptist Church in Jarrow, Tyne and Wear.
Mistakes on Christianity questions
In its evidence to the immigration tribunal, the Home Office said Ezedi had been unable to explain the reasons for his conversion, or show an understanding of Christian principles and beliefs.
Home Office officials told the tribunal that they did not accept his conversion was “genuine and long-lasting”, that he had lied and continued to be “dishonest” and was prepared to “use religion for his own ends”.
In his Home Office interview, he insisted he had read the Bible every day for three years, but asked what the Old Testament was about he replied: “Jesus Christ.”
Asked to name Jesus’s main followers, he replied: “Simon, Peter, Jacob, Andrew… 12 people, Disciples.” Grilled about what God created on the third day, he answered: “Good Friday and Easter Sunday and Resurrection Day.”
However, Judge O’hanlon, the immigration judge, said that although Ezedi had not been “honest in relation to other aspects of his claim,” that did not “automatically mean that his evidence in relation to his claimed conversion could not be believed”.
A few days after the Home Office interview, Ezedi’s immigration lawyers sent a statement on his behalf blaming the interpreter for his mistakes and correcting some of the factual errors. In the statement, he wrote: “The interpreter was Kurdish Iranian and I could not understand the dialect. I couldn’t understand his pronunciation.”
The judge cited as “compelling” the evidence from Rev Roy Merrin, of Grange Road Baptist Church, who told the tribunal that Ezedi had started attending in February 2016, a month after he arrived in the UK, and continued to do so for more than four years.
Rev Merrin said he was aware of people who claimed conversion with “ulterior motives” but told the tribunal he did not consider Ezedi such a person. Rev Merrin had attended tribunals on four previous occasions to support Christian convert asylum seekers and wrote in support of Ezedi’s conversion.
Judge O’hanlon granted asylum after concluding Ezedi’s conversion was “genuine”. He said: “Having considered all of the evidence before in the round, notwithstanding my concerns as to the honesty of [Ezedi] in relation to certain aspects of his account, I find [Ezedi] has been consistent in his evidence with regard to his conversion to Christianity.”
Ezedi’s claim was supported by letters from a Catholic Church Justice and Peace Refugee Project, the British Red Cross, and Grange Road Baptist Church representatives. It included pictures of him distributing Christian leaflets in Newcastle city centre and of him being baptised.
Conversion only mentioned in third appeal
His claim for asylum had been initially rejected in May 2016, with an appeal dismissed in February 2017. However, Ezedi lodged a further appeal in March 2019, a year after he was convicted of a sexual assault and indecent exposure in 2018 and handed a two-year suspended jail sentence.
Because he was not jailed, he was still eligible to claim asylum. However, it was only on his third appeal that he revealed he had converted to Christianity.
Asked by the judge to explain why he did not mention it in his 2017 appeal, Judge O’hanlon said his “response was somewhat vague, namely he had ‘forgotten’ to do so”.
The judge said he “did not find anything adverse” to Ezedi’s asylum claim as he “had only started attending the church in February of 2016”. He was baptised in June 2018 after attending the evangelical Alpha course.
Judge O’hanlon admitted Ezedi had “not been honest” in “several” aspects of his account but said: “I remind myself of the fact that [Ezedi] may not have been honest about certain aspects of his claim does not necessarily mean that he is lying about other matters, in this case his claimed Christian conversion.”
He cited a previous Supreme Court judgment involving a Somalian asylum seeker, saying: “We must be very careful not to dismiss an appeal just because an appellant has told lies. An appellant’s own evidence has to be considered in the round with other evidence.”
Church agreed to let sex offender attend services under contract
Ezedi was allowed to continue attending church under a special contract drawn up by the Baptist church.
A 2019 Baptists Together contract set out “agreed boundaries for the welfare and safety” of Ezedi and other worshippers at a church in Newcastle upon Tyne, newly released documents show.
The two-page document outlines how he was not allowed to be alone at Grange Road Baptist Church and had to be chaperoned at all times. The contract, renewed every six months, says: “This agreement is being put in place because of a conviction of sexual assault and exposure.”
It required Ezedi “to be accountable” to “carefully chosen individuals”, all of whom were men, who would “support” him. It adds: “They are aware of the conviction and will endeavour to pastorally listen to you, care for you, advise you and pray for you.”
Ezedi was given a suspended sentence in 2018 for grabbing a woman’s buttocks and exposing himself at a Newcastle bus stop.
The full indictment said he “intentionally touched” a woman in “circumstances being that the touching was sexual” and non-consensual between February and June 2017.
The second charge stated he “intentionally exposed his genitals intending that someone would see them and be caused alarm or distress” on June 5 2017. The indictment clarified the offence as involving “masturbating”.
At the time of the offences, he was living at a hostel in the Fenham area of Newcastle, working in a pizza take away in Jarrow and attending church there.
He was required to sign a document pledging only to go to the church on Sundays if he stayed “in the vicinity of at least one of the male supporters”.
He vowed: “I will only come to church for the Sunday service. I will not enter the church without one of my male supporters being present. I will stay beside my supporter all the time. I will leave the church when my supporter leaves or before them.”
His pledges included him agreeing to “not sit alone in the church at any time” and “any concerns” about his behaviour would be “shared securely” during “pastoral care meetings”.
The suspended sentence Ezedi received at Newcastle Crown Court was not severe enough to reach the threshold for deportation.
The victim of his assault later revealed how he began pestering her for sex soon after they became friends.
“If he’d been jailed for attacking me then surely he would have been deported,” the woman told The Sun.
“But the failings didn’t end there because someone from a church gave him a reference so he could gain asylum.”