Liverpool bomber Emad Al Swealmeen reportedly entered the UK with a forged passport from Jordan resulting in his asylum claim being denied. Despite this, he was left free in the country to carry out the attack on Remembrance Sunday.
Leaked documents from Emad Al Swealmeen’s 2014 forensic asylum interview have revealed that the would-be terrorist had a history of lying in order to increase his chances to gain asylum in Britain.
A 35-page dossier leaked to the Sun on Sunday showed that Al Swealmeen apparently lied to immigration officials about coming from war-ravaged Syria, claiming that he would face death if he returned there. The Liverpool attacker had actually travelled from the United Arab Emirates, where he enjoyed a stable life with his family.
The leaked report also revealed that he was challenged by an immigration officer over the validity of the passport he used to enter the UK.
When asked if he had Jordanian nationality, Al Swealmeen replied simply: “No”.
“So therefore you must have known the Jordanian passport was illegal?” the immigration officer questioned, to which the future terrorist replied that he had “no other option”.
“So you admit to knowingly using deception to obtain a visa to enter the UK?” the officer asked, with Al Swealmeen answering: “No, I didn’t have any knowledge.”
The immigration officer issued him a “credibility warning” to which Al Swealmeen claimed that he only had two options, either “stay and die or use the passport and escape.”
“That’s not strictly true. At the time of the visa application, you were not in Syria — you were in the UAE. So it’s not a question of ‘stay and die’ as you’d left Syria,” the officer remarked.
“You lied and used deception to enter the UK. Why should I believe you are from Syria?” he questioned.
Al Swealmeen said: “I don’t know how to answer.”
Apparently backing up the veracity of the report, a Home Office spokesman said: “The Home Office is urgently looking into how these sensitive documents relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation have been made public.”
While the UK mainstream media pounced on accounts of the bomber’s conversion to Christianity, suggestions have also been raised that he was merely gaming the Church of England to improve his chances of remaining in Britain.
Despite apparently lying to immigration officials and having his asylum request and subsequent appeals rejected, Al Swealmeen was not deported from the country. This afforded him, ultimately, the liberty to buy bomb components and carry out the terror attack in which he died at the Liverpool Women’s Hospital on Remembrance Sunday — the day in which the United Kingdom honours soldiers who have died in battle.
Commenting on the failure of the government to protect its citizens by actually enforcing immigration laws, Brexit leader Nigel Farage wrote on Monday: “Johnson is ultimately responsible for guarding his people. This is the sacred duty of any prime minister. It should override all others. Yet the present occupant of 10 Downing Street seems to have abandoned his post.”
Responding to reports that Al Swealmeen used a fraudulent passport to enter Britain, Farage said: “He used fake documents to get into Britain in 2014 and was able to run rings around officials for seven years, staying in this country and living off taxpayers. He is the proof that deportation has become a very rare phenomenon.
“If this is what the Left calls ‘diversity’, I can assure them that the vast majority of us don’t want it.”
Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka
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