Lawangeen Abdulrahimzai, the illegal Afghan migrant who murdered a young British man will serve a minimum of 29 years in prison.
Thomas Roberts, a 21-year-old aspiring Royal Marine, was stabbed twice in March 2022 by Abdulrahimzai, including through the heart.
A coroner's report last week into Roberts’ murder has spared the Home Office from a full inquiry into the circumstances of his death, however, there are many crucial questions that need answering as to how and why Abdulrahimzai was in Britain.
The coroner, Rachael Griffin, recognised there had been “individual errors” but said they “do not amount to a systemic failure”.
The Home Office is spending billions of taxpayers' money housing asylum seekersGettyThe circumstances around Lawangeen Abdulrahimzai’s entry into Britain and his subsequent time in the country are quite extraordinary.
The young Afghan migrant smuggled himself illegally into the UK in December 2019, and lied about his age to border officials.
He claimed he was 14 when in fact he was 19; no age assessment was carried out by the Home Office at this time.
Fingerprints taken from Abdulrahimzai revealed that he had links to Italy and Norway, but no follow up inquiries were made, which if they were, would have revealed there were doubts about his age.
Yvette CooperPAWorst of all Abdulrahimzai had already murdered two people in cold blood in July 2018 when he shot refugees in a shed in Serbia, though because proper checks had not been carried out the Home Office were not aware.
The authorities sent him to a school in Dorset and placed him in foster care.
Yet more warning signs were ignored by the state.
Abdulrahimzai was expelled from his first school for carrying knives, and he was alleged to have chased a student with a knife.
According to his foster mother, who he would later assault, he was warned by the police not to carry knives.
In his second school in Dorset he injured a child in an attack.
His foster mother even told authorities a dentist had raised concerns about Abdulrahimzai’s age not being what he had claimed, but still no age assessment was carried out.
Eventually he gave up on going to school, and started bringing women back to his apartment, which led to the Home Office finally deciding to conduct an age assessment in January 2022, two years after Abdulrahimzai smuggled himself into Britain.
Less than two days before Thomas Roberts was killed the police received a call that Abdulrahimzai was seen carrying a machete.
He had also posted pictures on TikTok of him with knives, which he later said was to gain followers.
The police attempted to gain access to Abdulrahimzai’s living accommodation, but found the front gate locked and the front receptionist asleep, so did not follow up.
The countless warning signs to various parts of the state, whether it was his schools, foster system, the police, Border Force, the local council and the Home Office, may have prevented the tragic murder of Roberts.
Roberts’ parents are furious, and have blamed the British state for not protecting their son.
“Everything is wrong in this country and it will continue to happen again,” his mother said.
The case of Lawangeen Abdulrahimzai is just one of over 130,000 people who have entered Britain illegally since 2018.
If we are to prevent more tragedies like the murder of Thomas Roberts, the Home Office needs to seriously reconsider its vetting and deportation programmes.
