Rishi Sunak does not think “foreign criminals should be able to stay” in the UK, his official spokesperson has said, amid a row over the immigration status of a sex offender hunted over a chemical assault on the streets of London.
Abdul Ezedi, reportedly from Afghanistan, who is wanted in connection with the attack in south London on Wednesday, was granted refugee status after he was convicted in 2018 for sexual assault and exposure.
A number of Conservative MPs have questioned how Ezedi was granted refugee status despite two previous failed attempts and his criminal convictions. He is understood to have been allowed to stay in the country after a priest confirmed he had converted to Christianity.
On Friday, the prime minister’s spokesperson declined to comment on the suspect’s immigration status during a live police investigation but said that more broadly, “the PM doesn’t think that foreign criminals should be able to stay in the country, putting the public at risk”.
He pointed to action the government was taking in the Nationality and Borders Act and Illegal Migration Act.
Ezedi pleaded guilty to one charge of sexual assault and one of exposure, the Crown Prosecution Service said. He was sentenced at Newcastle crown court on 9 January 2018 to a nine-week jail term suspended for two years for the sexual assault. For the exposure he was given 36 weeks’ imprisonment to be served consecutively, which was also suspended for two years. It has been reported he was granted refugee status in 2021 or 2022.
The former immigration minister Robert Jenrick called on the home secretary to conduct a “detailed review” of how Ezedi was granted refugee status.
Jenrick told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “It appears, from what little we know of this case, that this is an individual whose asylum or humanitarian protection in the UK was granted by a tribunal, so probably by a judge rather than Home Office officials, despite the fact that he had been convicted of a sexual offence and on the basis of evidence which, we shall have to see, may well be spurious or insubstantial, such as this suggestion that he had converted to Christianity.
“I think we need to investigate the particular circumstances. We shouldn’t jump to conclusions, and I would expect the home secretary to conduct a detailed review of what has happened and what may have gone seriously wrong in this case, and to put that information in the public domain, such is the public interest.”
Emergency services were called to Lessar Avenue in Clapham at about 7.25pm on Wednesday after a man doused the 31-year-old woman and her two daughters, aged three and eight, with what detectives called an alkaline substance. The victims were taken to hospital, along with passersby and police officers who were injured when they tried to help.
The family were in a stable condition in hospital on Thursday afternoon.
The Metropolitan police have alerted other forces in case Ezedi tries to flee London. Supt Gabriel Cameron said Ezedi was last seen in the Caledonian Road area of north London, and was believed to have travelled from the north-east of England to carry out the attack.
Detectives shared a new photo of Ezedi on Thursday, calling him “dangerous” and highlighting the badly injured right side of his face while appealing for witnesses to come forward.
