The Strange Story of the Clapham ‘Chemical Attacker’.
As this article is being written, the manhunt for Abdul Shokoor Ezedi is ongoing. Northumbria Police carried out three search warrants in Newcastle and the Metropolitan Police have carried out two search warrants in south London as the investigation continues into his motives and activities prior to the Clapham chemical attack on a woman and two little girls.
What is known so far is that Abdul Ezedi is a 37-year-old asylum-seeker from Afghanistan who arrived illegally in the UK in 2016 in the back of a lorry. He has a history of his asylum applications being rejected, not once but twice, and he was granted asylum on his third appeal. The fact that Ezedi was granted asylum is strange given that he was a convicted sex offender.
He had been convicted of a sexual assault and investigated and convicted over an incident of indecent exposure in 2018 and received a suspended sentence for those offences at Newcastle Crown Court. He was put on the sex offenders register for ten years, but was not ordered to be deported back to Afghanistan.
On January 31st 2024, Ezedi drove from Newcastle to the Clapham area of south London where he attacked a woman in her car and threw caustic chemicals at her and her two young daughters. Ezedi appears to have suffered chemical burns to his face during this incident, and the woman he attacked is in hospital with serious life-changing injuries, the two little girls were severely traumatised but not badly burned. What motivated this attack on this woman and her children has not yet been explained, and Abdul Ezedi is on the run.
There are many unexplained elements to this horrific story, such as how and why Ezedi drove from Newcastle to south London to carry out this attack. How did an impoverished ‘refugee’ obtain the car he drove to London in? From what the media have said so far, Abdul Ezedi has been described as living in “a hostel for single men in Byker, Newcastle”, police search warrants were carried out on premises in both the Byker and Heaton districts of Newcastle.
According to media sources in the North East, Ezedi lived in Byker at the hostel and at least once a fortnight he would visit the Justice and Peace Refugee Project in Newcastle, where he would receive support from charity workers and basic provisions. It is not clear at this point if Ezedi had a job or any kind of income other than basic Home Office handouts, but a local second-hand car dealer told journalists that Ezedi had approached him looking to buy a cheap car.
Ezedi was granted asylum after he claimed that he had converted to Christianity and would suffer religious persecution if he was deported back to Afghanistan. This dubious religious conversion was supported by a statement from a priest. This claim of religious conversion and fear of persecution drew this comment from former Home Office minister Suella Braverman, “Spurious claims based on religion are commonplace in our asylum system. The bar is low and it is easy to game the system, and it happens.”
So Abdul Ezedi claimed to have become a peaceful Christian, but a report in the North East Chronicle sheds a contradictory version: “Staff at a Kurdish grocery shop in Byker, recognised Ezedi” he was a regular customer for halal meat. More telling, “They claimed he told people he wanted to return to Afghanistan to find a wife, and described him as a good Muslim who did not drink alcohol.”
So the question has to be, that if Abdul Ezedi was afraid to return to Afghanistan because he feared that he would face religious persecution because he had converted to Christianity, why was he confiding in Kurdish Muslims that he wanted to return to Afghanistan to find a wife?
And if his conversion to Christianity was so devout and sincere, why was he considered a good Muslim by the Kurdish shop keepers? And how many ‘Christians’ insist on purchasing halal slaughtered meat? This case has echoes of the case of the Liverpool taxi bomber, Emad Al Swealmeen, who had a number of claims for asylum in the UK rejected, had a number of false identities and actually claimed to have converted to Christianity, but was secretly continuing to attend a mosque in Liverpool under his real name.
Of course this case is far from over and the man-hunt for Abdul Ezedi is continuing across London with some media sources speculating that the fugitive might try to return to the North East. There is much yet to be brought out into the public arena about this strange case and hopefully if he is arrested then the truth about Abdul Ezedi, his motives and the background behind the Clapham attack will be made public.
Predictably the organisations of the Left have swung into action in defence of ‘refugees’ and ‘asylum-seekers’, desperate to draw negative attention away from yet another case where an ‘asylum-seeker’ has gone on to commit horrific crimes on British soil. This is of course a long established tactic by the political Left, always keen to deflect the public conversation away from those they seek to champion, to re-direct the narrative and to denounce those asking the difficult questions. This is what the defenders of ‘refugees’, ‘asylum-seekers’ and ‘irregular migrants’ had to say; “Amnesty International warned that the attack should not be used as a pretext to target people seeking asylum or undermine the process.”
Also from Amnesty International was this: “The government urgently needs to ensure that the claims of anyone seeking asylum in the UK are decided fairly and efficiently and not be distracted by those seeking to exploit the Clapham attack for their own ends.” Seriously? Abdul Ezedi was twice refused asylum in the UK but won his case on the third attempt at appeal, despite the fact that he was by definition an illegal immigrant and was by that time a convicted sex offender who should have faced deportation.
Yet, no matter what excuses and distraction tactics are employed by the left-wing and liberal defenders of illegal immigrants and ‘asylum-seekers’, the inescapable truth is that yet another asylum seeker has gone on to commit a violent crime on UK soil.
Of course the inevitable question has to be, “How many more are there like Abdul Ezedi quietly living on charity amongst the refugee hostels and asylum-seeker occupied hotels not only on Tyneside but elsewhere across the United Kingdom?
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Top Image: The Guardian newspaper front page 02.02.24.
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