by Rakib Ehsan, spiked
Welcoming unvetted men into Britain from a deeply misogynistic culture is putting women at risk.
For many years, it has been tantamount to racism to draw any connection between foreign nationals and criminal offending in the UK. But case after case shows that there is a connection, and that it is becoming stronger. This is particularly true when it comes to male immigrants from Afghanistan committing sexual offences.
On Tuesday, Abdul Nabizada was sentenced to seven years in prison for raping a 19-year-old woman in Edinburgh in 2021. Nabizada had formerly worked as translator for the British Army in his native Afghanistan, before arriving in the UK in 2016 and beginning work as a private driver in Scotland. It was at work when Nabizada carried out the attack. His 19-year-old victim was intoxicated and had been expecting to be driven home, only to be subjected to a brutal sexual assault.
Afghan nationals have carried out sex attacks in Scotland before. In Falkirk, a town in Scotland’s central lowlands, Afghan national and illegal immigrant Sadeq Nikzad raped a 15-year-old schoolgirl in 2023. Before being jailed for nine years, Nikzad sought to defend himself by citing language barriers and cultural differences – such as the custom of child marriage in his homeland of Afghanistan.
[…] The statistics clearly show that Afghan nationals pose a disproportionate threat when it comes to sex offences. Last year, Sky News’s data and forensics unit – using annual population survey data from 2021 and Met Police figures – found that, for Afghan nationals, there were 59.2 sexual offence charges per 10,000 across England and Wales. The corresponding figure for UK nationals was 2.7 offences per 10,000 people.