ASYLUM: WAR CRIMINALS ON OUR STREETS

Monsters hide their past to slip in as refugees

By Anderea Perry
Crime Editor

BRITAIN is becoming a perfect hiding place for war criminals, murderers and repists from around the world. Ruthless foreign crooks have realised that the police have next to no chance of checking on their often appaling criminal records.

They are able to slip into the country as bogus asylum seekers knowing that their applications to begin a new life will not be blocked. Those arriving at UK sea ports and airports range from child pickpockets from Eastern Europe, who have caused chaos on the London Tube, to an African army chief believed to have massacred 100,000 in war-torn Rwanda.

Many other illegal immigrants have become major players in blackmail, prositution, drugs and protection rackets. Senior police officer Chris Fox warned that Britain is in danger of being overwhelmed by a "tidal wave" of foreign criminals.

Mr. Fox, chief constable of Northamptonshire, said: "Mass migration has brought with it a whole new type of crime."

Fiasco that makes the UK a perfect sanctuary for killers and rapists

Killers, rapists and even war criminals are slipping into the UK to seek asylum, knowing police here have almost no chance of discovering their appaling past.

Police and intelligence service sources admit that, despite Home Office promises of a crackdown on the asylum shambles, Britain is a perfect hiding place for those desperate to escape justice for their grisly crimes abroad. ...

In any case, an immigrant wishing to hide a criminal past can give a false identity or lie about the country of origin. ... It is known that asylum seekers return to the UK after being deported and claim to be a different person.

Police sources said: "When there has been an uprising often the first place to fall is the local jail. The prisoners disappear and the manage to find their way ot the UK. If they provide false identities it makes any form of checking impossible. Often the asylum seeker will have a lengthly criminal record or be on the run from the police in the country they claim to come from but, by providing false country details, even a fingerprint check would bring up no trace." ...

Mr. Fox, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers said that towns and cities across the country were struggling to combat a vast upsurge in offences.

Genuine asylum seekers were being used as a cover for organised gangs from Africa, Eastern Europe and the Caribbean dealing in drugs, guns, fraud, kidnapping and prostitution, he claimed. ...

The Home Office does not collate details of how many asylum seekers commit crimes once in Britain. ... Officers are increasingly concerned about the emergence of pockets of criminals from Eastern Europe, particularly Albania, linked to 70 kidnappings in the past 12 months.

Sunday Express, May 25, 2003, pages 1,7