LONDON (Parliament Politics Magazine): According to court documents, the Liverpool terror attacker’s asylum plea was denied six years before he attempted to carry out his attack.
On Remembrance Sunday last year, Emad al Swealmeen was killed when his homemade bomb exploded outside Liverpool Women’s Hospital inside a taxi.
With a Jordanian passport, he entered the UK legitimately in May 2014.
However, al Swealmeen, who was born in Iraq, fraudulently purported to be of Syrian ancestry in refugee applications, and his plea was denied, according to a coroner’s court last month.
Al Swealmeen had been diagnosed with anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, according to the report.
He was born in Baghdad and had previously been convicted in Liverpool for carrying an offensive weapon and had been imprisoned in the Middle East for a major attack.
Despite converting to Christianity after arriving in the UK, he was still a practising Muslim and had lived in housing supplied by the Home Office until April last year, when he began renting a flat in Rutland Avenue, Liverpool.
There was no evidence of a “well-founded fear of persecution.”
When evaluating al Swealmeen’s appeal, officials at the Home Office determined that he had a “well-founded fear of persecution” and hence failed to qualify for asylum.
They went on to say that he had not proven “strong grounds” for humanitarian protection, and that he had been told of the decision of removing him from the UK in court filings.
The judge acknowledged that his testimony had a lot of flaws and that, in light of al Swealmeen’s trustworthiness, the appellant had made an attempt at producing an account to present himself in the best light.
“In view of all the evidence, I reject his account of events in Syria and his fears on his return in their entirety, and dismiss his asylum appeal,” the judge said.
Al Swealmeen did not show up for the court, and his lawyers had dropped out of the case.
In January 2021, a new asylum application was made.
Al Swealmeen filed a new asylum application in January of last year, which was still pending at the time of the November incident.
This indicates that he had lately filed a new asylum claim with the Home Office, which was similarly denied.
The Home Office declined to respond to inquiries.
When al Swealmeen’s asylum plea and appeal were both denied, the agency continually refused to address questions about the case or explain why he wasn’t deported.
The New Plan for Immigration would force people to disclose all protection-related concerns upfront to confront the habit of making multiple and consecutive claims and enable the expulsion of those who had no right to be there more quickly, a spokesperson told the Press Association.
They refused to say if an internal investigation or an internal inquiry was being conducted by the Home Office into how the issue was handled.
Image via BBC
