Liverpool Bomber Had his Asylum Rejected SIX Years Before Attack

The Liverpool taxi bomber who blew himself up in the car park of a city hospital had his asylum rejected in 2015, six years before his attempted attack.

Iraqi born Emad Al Swealmeen — who falsely claimed to be Syrian in his failed asylum application — targeted Liverpool Women’s Hospital on Remembrance Sunday (November 14th) 2021. It was claimed at the time that his attack was stopped by Liverpudlian taxi driver Dave Perry who realised that Swealmeen was potentially carrying an explosive and locked the would-be terrorist in the car, where the device ultimately detonated, only killing Swealmeen.

It has now since emerged that the bomber had his asylum seeker application denied by the Home Office six years before the attack, but like thousands of others, he was never actually deported.

The coroner’s court heard that Swealmeen had his asylum appeal denied by the Home Office on the 16th of April 2015, after he was initially rejected after arriving legally in Britain in 2014. The court discovered at that time Swealmeen had falsified information in his asylum application, incorrectly claiming he was from Syria.

Assuming a Syrian identity was a common tactic for asylum seekers in the last decade in Europe, given the widespread — and largely correct — assumption that Syrians would receive preferential treatment from governments.

Despite a judge ruling in 2015 that they rejected Swealmeen’s “account of events in Syria and his fears on his return in their entirety” and the subsequent dismissal of Iraqi-born Swealmeen’s “asylum appeal”, the British Home Office allowed Swealmeen to remain in Britain and even provided housing for him as recently as April 2021, ITV reports.

It was also revealed at the coroner’s court that Swealmeen, 32, had a history of violence, having been locked up in the Middle East for serious assault and had even previously been convicted in Britain for possessing an offensive weapon in public.

The Home Office opted not to seek immediate enforced deportation — which they were legally entitled to do — even after it was revealed in the courts at the time that Swealmeen had a “middle-class upbringing” in Jordan, Iraq and Dubai, and language analysis conducted by the Home Office determined Al Swealmeen was Iraqi, not Syrian as he had claimed.

The Home Office has repeatedly refused to explain why Swealmeen was not deported by British authorities after his initial appeal was rejected in 2015.

Swealmeen’s case has also exposed a major flaw in the British asylum system process, as he claimed to have converted to Christianity in an alleged effort to try and negate the risk of him being deported. It is unlikely Christians from some Islamic countries will be deported back due to the discrimination Christians suffer in these nations, or if apostasy — leaving the Islamic faith — is criminalised.

The coroner’s court however learned that Al Swealmeen was still a practising Muslim at the time of his attack, despite allegedly converting to Christianity in May 2017, so was supposedly exploiting this loophole to stay in Britain.