by Hugo Timms, spiked
The alleged beheading Belfast speaks to the insanity of the UK’s non-existent borders.
In Belfast on Monday night, a man in his 40s was subjected to a random and brutal knife attack. Incredibly, Stephen Ogilvie has survived, although not without the loss of one eye and severe damage to the other, along with serious injuries to his neck and back. He remains in a coma and in a critical condition.
Graphic footage of the attack quickly spread online, accompanied by rumours that the suspect was an asylum seeker or refugee. At the Belfast Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday morning, after a night of rioting on the city’s streets, 30-year-old Sudanese refugee Hadi Alodid was charged on suspicion of attempted murder and remanded in custody.
There is much we still don’t know about the attack or the suspect. We do now know that Alodid is a Sudanese national. He travelled to Belfast in February 2023 from Dublin, having flown there from Paris. After crossing the border from the Republic of Ireland to the UK, he immediately lodged an asylum claim. Seven months later, in September 2023, Alodid was granted leave to remain until 2028, having been fast-tracked through the asylum system.
Much has been made of the fact that Alodid was able to enter Northern Ireland from the European Union – Paris, then Dublin to Belfast – by virtue of the Common Travel Area (CTA), which allows British and Irish nationals to move freely around the British Isles. It has been claimed that this is a ‘loophole’ or an ‘Achilles heel’ in the UK’s immigration system, which Alodid was able to take advantage of.
In truth, the CTA is a red herring. The real outrage is not that migrants can travel from Dublin to Belfast without encountering a border guard. It is that as soon as the suspect entered the UK, there was virtually no chance of him ever being made to leave – whether he had been granted asylum or not, and whatever rules, laws and policies might have been in place at the time.