Latest news with #asylumSeeker
CNA
6 days ago
- General
- CNA
Syrian man pleads guilty to deadly knife rampage at German festival
DUSSELDORF, Germany: A Syrian man suspected of belonging to the Islamic State group pleaded guilty on Tuesday (May 27) to killing three people and wounding 10 more in a stabbing spree at a German summer festival last year. Issa Al Hasan, 27, made the confession at the start of his trial, which was held under tight security at the higher regional court in Duesseldorf. In a statement read out by his lawyer, Hasan, sitting under police guard behind a protective glass screen, admitted having "committed a grave crime". "Three people died at my hands. I seriously injured others," Hasan said of the attack in August in the western city of Solingen. "Some of them survived only by luck. They could have died, too," he said in the statement. "I deserve and expect a life sentence." The stabbing spree at the mid-summer street festival was one of a string of attacks that shocked Germany and stoked security fears. Hasan was an asylum seeker from Syria who had been slated for deportation. German authorities' failure to remove him from the country fired a bitter debate over immigration in the run-up to national elections in February this year. Hasan faces charges including three counts of murder, 10 counts of attempted murder and membership of a foreign terror organisation. "REVENGE" FOR MUSLIMS Prosecutors say he set out to harm "nonbelievers" at the "festival for diversity" in the centre of the western city of Solingen. Hasan allegedly saw his targets "as representatives of Western society" and sought "to take revenge against them for the military actions of Western states". A member of IS whom Hasan had contacted that month allegedly encouraged him to go ahead with the plan and promised him that the group would claim it and use it for propaganda purposes. The group later said via its Amaq outlet on the Telegram messaging app that an IS "soldier" had carried out the attack in "revenge" for Muslims "in Palestine and everywhere". Prosecutors say Hasan had filmed videos in which he pledged allegiance to IS and forwarded them on to his IS contact just before he committed the attack. In the statement read out by his lawyer, Hasan recanted his alleged motivation for carrying out the attack. "I killed and injured innocent people, not unbelievers," he said. "Christians, Jews and Muslims, we all are cousins, not enemies." IMMIGRATION DEBATE The Solingen stabbing spree was one in a series of attacks attributed to asylum seekers and migrants that pushed immigration to the top of the political agenda in Germany. In May 2024, a man with a knife attacked people at an anti-Islam rally in Mannheim, mortally wounding a police officer who intervened. The Afghan suspect in the stabbing went on trial in February and is also alleged to be sympathetic to the IS group. In December, a Saudi man was arrested after a car rammed into a Christmas market in the eastern city of Magdeburg, killing six people and wounding hundreds. And in January, a man with a kitchen knife attacked a group of kindergarten children in Aschaffenburg, killing a two-year-old boy and a man who tried to intervene. A 28-year-old Afghan man was arrested at the scene of the attack, which came during campaigning for elections on Feb 23. Just 10 days before the vote, an Afghan man was arrested on suspicion of ploughing a car through a street rally in Munich, killing a two-year-old girl and her mother and injuring dozens. The centre-right CDU/CSU, which demanded tough curbs on immigration in the wake of the attacks, came first in the election with 28.5 per cent of the vote. The biggest gains however were made by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which saw its share of the vote more than double to over 20 per cent.
Daily Mail
21-05-2025
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE The shocking truth about the rise in asylum seekers pretending to be gay so they can stay in Britain: How men are passing off their brothers as their boyfriends and using charities to 'manufacture' fake homosexual identities
It is an incident that has entered Home Office folklore, gaining almost mythical status as an illustration of our broken asylum system. And it remains all too relevant today. The episode involved an asylum seeker from an African nation who claimed, like so many, that he could not be sent back to his homeland because he would be targeted for being gay.
Daily Mail
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
50 Cent's rapper friend Bang Em Smurf is staying in a taxpayer-funded UK asylum hotel - after being jailed over a shootout in the US
One of rapper 50 Cent's group G-Unit is an asylum seeker living in a UK hotel at the taxpayers' expense. Bang Em Smurf, real name Daniel Calliste, was a short-lived member of the hip hop posse - even appearing in the video for the iconic 2003 chart topper In Da Club. Calliste is now living in the Novotel hotel near Stevenage in Hertfordshire, which is being used to house asylum seekers, The Sun reported. The 102-room, four-star property is currently closed to the public. Calliste is believed to have fled to the UK at the end of 2024 after claiming he was under threat from gang members in his homeland of Trinidad. He was born there but emigrated to America and started rapping age 15, ending up as part of the original G-Unit line-up and unofficially 50 Cent's head of security. 'You couldn't breathe the same air as 50 without going through Smurf. That was his shooter, his gunner,' fellow Queens Domination told Vice in 2005. However the pair later fell out when Calliste got arrested after a New York shoot out in 2004, 50 Cent - real name Curtis Jackson - refused to pay Smurf's $75,000 bail. 'That's when I first started working with Domination. I had a mixtape with Domination, and I'm on the block and my homie got a situation, and this dude he had a problem with knocked him out,' Calliste told 'Laid him flat out in front of me, and that's my dude. So we did what we did. Dudes we got in the conflict with kept it gutter. 'They got hit up, they didn't say nothing – they didn't go to no hospital in Queens. I respect their gangsta.' Smurf ended up serving three-and-a-half years for gun possession after the incident and was deported back to Trinidad upon his release. A source said: 'It's crazy he was let in after being deported from the US with a criminal record for violent offences. 'His history is well known. He is being supported by the taxpayer.' Calliste claims he came to the UK as Universal was planning to adapt his 2018 memoir Wisdom of a Wolf: The G Behind the Unit into a film. He was also spotted enjoying his 44th birthday in Battersea in South London earlier this year. Members of the group "G-Unit," Young Buck, left, 50 Cent, center, and Lloyd Banks perform at the MTV studios in New York's Times Square as part of MTV's 'Spankin' New Music Week,' Thursday, Nov. 13, 2003 It is believed that Calliste's application for asylum has been rejected and he will be deported back to his native Trinidad. He told The Sun: 'There ain't no story. You're talking to the horse's mouth. I'm telling you, that's fake news.'
Daily Mail
10-05-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Revealed: Iranian man arrested over 'foiled terror plot on Israeli embassy' is asylum seeker who was living in taxpayer-funded house
One of five Iranian men arrested this month over an alleged plot to attack Israel 's embassy in London is an asylum seeker living in a taxpayer-funded house, The Mail on Sunday can reveal. Footage on social media showed Special Forces and armed police dragging the semi-naked 40-year-old from the house in Rochdale on May 3. He was one of five Iranian men aged between 24 and 46 arrested under terrorism powers that day, with others held in Manchester, Stockport, Swindon and London. One, a 24-year-old from Manchester, was released on bail under strict conditions on Monday. It was later reported that the embassy in Kensington, west London, was the target of an attack that the alleged plotters were just hours away from executing. MI5 says Iran has been behind at least 20 terror plots in Britain since January 2022. Now an MoS investigation has revealed the 40-year-old Iranian held in Rochdale lived in a terraced home managed by the British firm Serco, which houses asylum seekers around the country on behalf of the Home Office. Neighbours and former asylum-seeker tenants of the house told the MoS that Serco had run it since at least 2015. The run-down property usually accommodates four asylum seekers, with each having a bedroom and sharing the bathroom and kitchen. One former asylum seeker, who lived at the house nine years ago, said tenants did not pay any rent or bills because Serco covered all the costs. Asylum seekers arrive in Serco vans after staying in hotels. They stay until they get permission to stay in Britain, at which point they find their own accommodation. Neighbours told the MoS that the 40-year-old man had lived at the property for more than six months, but did not speak to anyone beyond saying 'Hello'. One, who did not want to give her name, said: 'A Serco official told me they will not rent this house any more for asylum seekers.' The Iranian is believed to have arrived in Britain illegally in a small boat and claimed asylum. Police chiefs and Whitehall officials fear the Calais migrant route is being exploited by state-backed Iranian terrorists to commit atrocities on UK soil. There were fears last night that other members of the alleged plot may also be asylum seekers who crossed the Channel in small boats. Terrorism expert Anthony Glees, of Buckingham University, said: 'The Calais boat route self-evidently presents a clear and present danger to national security. 'I have always said migrants should be met by warships, not lifeboats. A dedicated agent of a hostile state will use this route to come into the country.' A record 11,000 small-boat migrants have arrived in Britain from Calais this year alone, despite Prime Minister Keir Starmer's pledge to 'smash the gangs' behind the vile trade. The figures also showed that last year Iranians (4,243 arrivals) were the third most numerous after Afghans and Syrians. Alongside the five arrests, three other Iranian men were held on May 3 in London in a separate investigation, accused of spying under the National Security Act. A fourth man was arrested yesterday in north-west London as part of the same inquiry.
