London’s Metropolitan Police arrested 1,470 people in 2022 from five states whose nationals’ asylum claims will now be fast-tracked without officials even talking to them, Breitbart Europe can reveal.
The figures obtained by Breitbart Europe show the number of foreign nationals, not including dual nationals, detained by Britain’s largest police force for a so-called first arrest offence — the “original reason for the[ir] arrest, though the Detainee could later be dealt with for further and / or other Offences”, the force explained — in 2022.
While the figures do not present a full story of the burden on law enforcement of dealing with foreign offenders across the country — or indeed across London alone, as suspects detained by the independent City of London Police and British Transport Police rather than the Met were not included — they do suggest that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s plan to fast-track the asylum claims of nationals of Afghanistan, Eritrea, Libya, Syria, and Yemen without interviewing them presents a potential threat to public safety.
Nineteen Afghans, for example, were detained by the Met on suspicion of rape in 2022, along with 12 Eritreans, four Libyans, and six Syrians, for 41 suspected rapists in total.
Two more arrests for “rape of a female age 16 and over” — suspected rapes of minors aged 16 to 17, 13 to 15, and under 13 were recorded separately — were listed for Afghanistan and Syria, along with four arrests for “sexual assault on a female aged 13 and over” (three for Afghanistan, one for Eritrea), one arrest for a “sexual assault of a female child under 13” (Afghanistan), and one arrest for a “sexual assault on a male child under 13” (also Afghanistan).
Building a fuller picture of the number of sexual crimes allegedly carried out by nationals of the five countries using the figures provided by the Metropolitan Police was difficult, as the listed offences were sometimes vague or appeared to overlap, but it seems they were by no means negligible in scale, with dozens of arrests logged under “sexual offences, other” — 27 for Afghanistan, 14 for Eritrea, three for Libya, and ten for Syria, for 54 in total — along with, for example, three arrests for “indecent assault, female” (all for Afghanistan), nine arrests for “indecent exposure” (eight for Afghanistan, one for Syria), and one for “child – indecent images” (Afghanistan).
Rapes and sexual offences were not the most the most serious crimes nationals of the fast-track countries were accused of, however, with one Afghan and three Syrians arrested for murder.
A further two Afghans and one Syrian were arrested for attempted murder, and 13 Aghans, seven Eritreans, eight Syrians, and three Libyans were arrested for threats to murder.
Alleged violent crimes, including the most serious categories of such crime short of murder, also saw people from the five countries arrested in large numbers — larger numbers than for lower-level acquisitive crimes, in many cases.
Twenty-one Afghans, 11 Eritreans, one Libyan, six Syrians, and one Yemeni were arrested for inflicting Grievous Bodily Harm (GBH) — assaults resulting in “really serious” injury, physical or psychological, such as brain damage or broken bones — with one further listing for an Afghan arrested for “Assault – GBH (Sec[tion] 20)” for 41 in total.
Fifty-two Afghans, 25 Eritreans, two Libyans, 14 Syrians, and three Yemenis were arrested for inflicting Actual Bodily Harm (ABH) — assaults resulting in theoretically much less serious injuries, although England’s soft-touch prosecutors are known to pursue ABH charges for attacks that average members of the public would consider very serious, such as stabbing someone in the head and side — with a further five Afghans listed under an entry for “Assault, ABH” for 101 in total.
A further 74 Afghans, 44 Eritreans, seven Libyans, 14 Syrians, and five Yemenis were arrested for “Common assault”, with a further eight Afghans, one Eritrean, one Libya, and one Syrian listed under “Assault – Common” for 155 in total.
As ABH is supposed to be less serious than GBH, so you would typically expect common assaults to be less serious than assaults occasioning Actual Bodily Harm — the lowest level common assaults do not even have to include physical contact, or “battery” — although again the authorities do at times use it arguably inappropriately, with one instance seeing a judge actually upbraiding prosecutors for charging a man who broke a woman’s nose and knocked her teeth loose with mere common assault, for example.
As the Metropolitan Police figures for sexual crimes are not especially easy to parse, so do the above statistics not quite present the full picture with respect to violent crime due to the range of offences — a further eight Eritreans can be found listed as having been detained for “violent disorder”, for example — but they do nevertheless show a huge amount of energy being put into dealing with alleged violent offenders from Afghanistan, Eritrea, Libya, Syria, and Yemen by a single police force in a single year.
Arrests for lower-level knife crimes, which are a particular problem in Britain at present, were perhaps less startling, with 17 people listed under arrests for “Possession of offensive weapon – knife” (eight Afghans, five Eritreans, three Libyans, one Syrian), 15 under “Possession of a pointed/bladed article – Knife” (four Afghans, six Eritreans, four Libyans, one Syrian), and seven under “Possession of offensive weapon – other than knife” (three Afghans, two Eritreans, one Libyan, one Syrian).
More alarming, despite the small total numbers, might be two arrests for possession of firearms “with intent” (one Eritrean, one Libyan) and “without intent” (one Afghan), considering firearms’ potential to inflict harm in a country where the public and even the police are largely unarmed.
Looking at alleged criminality by people from fast-track asylum states overall, the Met’s figures show 703 Afghans had to be detained in 2022, followed by 414 Eritreans, 221 Syrians, 112 Libyans, with a comparatively small complement of 20 Yemenis bringing up the rear — split into nationals of “Yemen (Arab Republic)” and “Yemen (Dem. Peoples Republic)”, at 17 and 3 arrests apiece, for unclear reasons, with the contemporary Republic of Yemen not actually appearing in the figures.
With 703 arrests, Afghans were actually among the non-EU nationalities most arrested by the Met in 2022, behind only Albania, India, Brazil, Nigeria, and Somalia — suggesting that integrating people from the South Asian country is proving to be a challenge.
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