Last summer, protests erupted in towns across Britain against the asylum hotels that had recently sprung up in these communities. This was seized on as proof that an incipient ‘far right’ was on the march, and that the public had been whipped into a frenzy against innocent, vulnerable refugees. But the grim case of Ahmad Mulakhil is merely the latest to have vindicated the protesters.
Last week, Mulakhil, a 23-year-old Afghan national, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for raping a 12-year-old girl in Nuneaton. He committed the offence in July, not long after arriving in Britain on a small boat, and while living in taxpayer-funded accommodation in the small Warwickshire town.
Everything that’s wrong with Britain’s immigration system seems to be encapsulated in this grim case. There is no evidence that Mulakhil had a legitimate case for claiming asylum. Nor was there any good reason why this young man should have been living courtesy of the taxpayer. Perhaps most egregious were the British state’s efforts to cover up the crime and gaslight the public.
Local residents were understandably furious when news of the rape emerged last summer. It sparked protests that mirrored those in Epping, Essex, a few weeks earlier, over reports that a newly arrived illegal migrant had sexually assaulted a teenager. Alarmed by the public’s anger, Warwickshire Police and the local council contrived to bury Mulakhil’s nationality and immigration status. As the Daily Mail reported at the time, police told councillors not to reveal anything about the offender’s background lest this knowledge ‘inflame community tensions’. In other words, it was felt that the public could not be trusted with the facts.
The facts, as we now know, were nothing short of shocking. Mulakhil identified his victim while she was playing on a swing at a local playground. Later that evening, he lured her to the cul-de-sac where he raped her. He also filmed the attack. Police tracked him down with the help of CCTV footage from a nearby corner shop where, immediately after the attack, he bought some drinks using a debit card provided to him by the Home Office. The victim was found alone, mumbling to herself, a short distance from where she was assaulted.
Cases like this are becoming disturbingly common. Hadush Kebatu, an illegal immigrant from Ethiopia, had been in the UK for less than a week before he sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl and an adult woman in early July last year. Kebatu too had been living in a migrant hotel – Epping’s Bell Hotel – while he carried out the assault. After he was convicted of sexual assault in October, he was paid £500 by the British state to return to Africa, a deportation that was made more difficult after prison officers mistakenly released him. He was eventually found in Finsbury Park in north London. The incompetence of the British state would almost be comical were its consequences not so catastrophic.
Similarly, two Afghan teenagers were recently convicted of raping a 15-year-old girl in a park in Leamington Spa, also in Warwickshire. In January, a Turkish asylum seeker was jailed for raping an 18-year-old teenager in Tamworth, Staffordshire. In all of these cases, children and young women are the main victims of Britain’s failure to protect its borders.
It is common sense that men from countries that disregard women’s rights – or, in the case of Afghanistan, view them as little better than property – will pose an increased threat to the communities where they are sent to live. It is also a perfectly normal human instinct to feel uncomfortable with the fact that a local hotel, or a house on your street, has been repurposed as accommodation for illegal migrants.
This is why protests erupted last summer – not just in Epping and Nuneaton, but across the UK, too. It wasn’t just that people felt threatened – as the evidence shows, they were overwhelmingly right to. It was also that all of this had been done over their heads. There was never any manifesto pledge or vote in parliament giving consent to spending £5.5million per day to house illegal immigrants, possibly in a pub or hotel on your street. Instead, communities have been told to put up and shut up. And when they have refused to stay quiet, they have been smeared with accusations of racism.
Ahmad Mulakhil will rightly spend a long time in prison for his crimes, but he should never have been in a position to commit them in the first place. Instead of being prevented from entering the UK illegally or punished for doing so, he was rewarded with free accommodation and Home Office pocket money. His welfare as a supposedly vulnerable refugee was continually prioritised over the safety and concerns of ordinary British citizens.
It is high time that the public got the immigration system they voted for, before more innocent people are hurt.
Hugo Timms is a staff writer at spiked.
