The Belfast knife attack suspect was granted asylum in Britain under a controversial ‘fast-track’ scheme, the Daily Mail can reveal.
Hadi Alodid was given permission to stay here after completing a 10-page Home Office questionnaire rather than undergoing the standard – and far more rigorous – face-to-face interview process.
It prompted new calls to re-think the ‘streamlined’ programme set up when Rishi Sunak was prime minister as part of his pledge to clear a backlog of 92,000 asylum cases.
Then home secretary Suella Braverman and immigration minister Robert Jenrick – who have both since defected to Reform – oversaw the introduction of the scheme, which is still in operation.
It was privately described within the Home Office as the ‘grant factory’, in reference to the huge numbers of asylum seekers granted refugee status.
Asylum seekers from countries like Sudan were allowed to access the streamlined system – reducing the backlog – because the vast majority of their claims were eventually granted in any case due to conflict in their home nations.
But the scheme was dubbed a ‘dangerous folly’ and an ‘asylum amnesty in all but name’ by Migration Watch UK, which campaigns for tougher border controls, after its launch in February 2023, the month Alodid travelled by bus from Dublin to Belfast.
Four months later, in June 2023, it was extended to Sudanese nationals and Alodid was granted a five-year refugee visa in September that year.
His case was dealt with under the fast-track scheme, it is understood.
Hadi Alodid appeared in court on Wednesday and was charged with attempted murder and possession of a knife
Then home secretary Suella Braverman (pictured) and immigration minister Robert Jenrick – who have both since defected to Reform – oversaw the introduction of the scheme, which is still in operation
Robert Jenrick was Tory immigration minister in 2023 – when the Belfast suspect was granted refugee status in Britain under the Streamlined Asylum Process
Known as the ‘Streamlined Asylum Process’, or SAP, it is also open to Eritreans, Syrians, Afghans, Libyans and Yemenis.
A Tory source said: ‘The Home Office at the time did not want to do the fast-track scheme but Rishi forced it on them.
‘It was the worst of both worlds because he failed to stop small boats across the Channel and, at the same time, made it easier to win asylum.
‘It was totally illogical and they should have been working to disincentive asylum seekers.’
Ms Braverman was sacked from the Home Office by Mr Sunak in October 2023 and in a blistering resignation letter accused him of betraying both her and the nation, particularly on immigration.
Accusing him of ‘magical thinking’ and of repeatedly ‘compromising’ on tough changes to asylum law, she wrote: ‘This irresponsibility has wasted time and left the country in an impossible position.’
A Daily Mail analysis of latest Home Office data shows the number of asylum claims from Sudanese nationals has soared from 2,853 in 2022 to 5,112 last year.
In the year to March, 95 per cent of Sudanese asylum claims where the Home Office made an initial decision – more than 5,503 main applicants – were granted.
Hadi Alodid, 30, from Sudan, has been charged with attempted murder and possession of a knife, as well as a separate charge of making threats to kill an NHS radiographer. He appeared at Belfast magistrates’ court on Wednesday and was remanded in custody
Meanwhile, the number of Sudanese coming here by small boat and then claim asylum has nearly tripled from 1,525 in 2022 to 4,537 last year – as migrants know that under the SAP scheme they are almost certain to be handed refugee status.
Dr Rakib Ehsan, senior fellow at the think-tank Policy Exchange said of the Alodid case: ‘This raises serious questions over the immigration and asylum policy of successive governments of all parties.
‘With the possibility that his asylum claim was granted under efforts to streamline decision-making processes to reduce the backlog of cases, this course of action has risked undermining public security of local communities across the home nations.
‘The UK must toughen its border security and reform the asylum system in a way that has the safety of established communities at heart – even if this means extricating itself from international conventions and treaties.’
Compared with Mr Sunak’s premiership, the Conservatives have considerably hardened their policies on asylum and now pledge to take Britain out of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and introduce rapid deportation for illegal immigrants.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said of the Belfast attack: ‘This appalling case shows why no illegal immigrants should even be able to apply for asylum, let alone receive it.
‘The new Conservative policy is to ban asylum claims by illegal immigrants and leave the ECHR so they can be immediately deported.
‘That is what should have happened here.
‘There should be no fast-track but there should also be no asylum status awarded to illegal immigrants at all.’
Then home secretary Suella Braverman launched a blistering attack on then PM Rishi Sunak after he sacked her in October 2023 accusing him of a ‘betrayal’, particularly on immigration policy
The Daily Mail revealed in 2023 that civil servants warned ministers the SAP would fail to identify ‘bad guys’ including terrorists and serious offenders who, as a result, would receive the right to remain in the UK instead of being refused asylum and put on a deportation list.
Alodid was able to cross from the Republic of Ireland to Northern Ireland thanks to the Common Travel Area (CTA), which means there are no identity checks on travellers.
Security minister Dan Jarvis confirmed on Wednesday he had already begun internal talks about potential weaknesses in the CTA.
During a Commons debate about the attack and Tuesday night’s unrest in Belfast, Conservative MP for Dumfries and Galloway John Cooper said the CTA was ‘clearly the unlocked back door to the United Kingdom’.
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He said he wrote to the Home Secretary in January after a whistleblower told him the UK Border Force ‘lacked sufficient personnel to cover night sailings from Belfast and Larne to my constituency Dumfries and Galloway, where Cairnryan is the main port’.
The minister said: ‘I met with officials this morning specifically to discuss the points that he has raised.
‘We will use all of the tools that we have our disposal to address the points that he raises, including intelligence-led operations.
‘We look very closely at these things, and where there is a requirement for us to do more, then we will do so.’
Democratic Unionist Party leader Gavin Robinson asked Sir Keir Starmer during Prime Minister’s Questions in the Commons to close ‘the open, porous border between our country and the Irish Republic’.
And in the Republic, leader of the conservative Aontú party, Peadar Tóibín, said: ‘Ireland and Britain have a wide-open back door that makes it impossible to manage the flow of people.’
He called for an ‘Irish sea border’ with identity checks on entry and exit, so that ‘those applying for asylum on either island will have to do so when they land’.
Britain’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation Jonathan Hall KC called for wider debate on how migration was affecting national security and ‘destabilising to the nation’.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘It does raise the question if certain countries are more likely either to commit very serious offences or to get involved in state threat activity, do we need to start thinking about migration now not simply in terms of the economy or housing but also in terms of national security?’
He added: ‘At the moment there are people who happen to be black and brown but are as British as you or me who probably feel they can’t go about their business. That is destabilising to the nation.’
