Now a convicted people smuggler is claiming asylum in the UK

Since arriving in Britain, Twana Jamal prefers to go by the name ‘Sultan Pasha’, which translates to something like ‘King Lord’, or, more tautologically, ‘Ruler Ruler’. The name aptly describes the status the 46-year-old seems to think his new home, Blaby, a village in Leicestershire, has bestowed upon him. ‘We know everyone in this city’, he recently told an acquaintance in a conversation overheard by a BBC reporter. ‘This city is ours.’

Jamal, an Iraqi Kurd, was convicted of people smuggling in France in 2016 and sentenced to five years in prison. French authorities described him as one of the most prolific people smugglers on record, earning around £100,000 per week at the time of his offences. Now, Jamal is applying for asylum in Britain, while reportedly driving without a licence and working in vape and sweet shops owned by his brother.

Watching Jamal being doorstepped by the BBC at one of those shops is a perfect illustration of the absurd farce the British state calls its asylum system. The man lies like he sells flavoured nicotine vapour – which, of course, he also denies doing.

‘Have you told the Home Office you’re a convicted people smuggler?’ the reporter asks. ‘Smuggler? I never did that.’ ‘The courts in France estimate you were the most prolific people smuggler they’d come across’, the reporter continues. ‘What’s the proof? What’s the proof?’ The reporter then asks: ‘why are you claiming asylum?’ ‘I’ve been here for a long, long time’, Jamal insists. ‘[B]ecause I was not safe in my country and then I came to this country.’

The conversation continues in this vein. After about 15 seconds, Jamal’s responses become tediously predictable: one sub-literate lie stumbles over the next, forming a tissue of untruths that all point in the most convenient direction for Jamal. After denying he had been imprisoned in France, the reporter shows him a picture of him in handcuffs. ‘This is you in France’, she says. ‘I don’t care. When was that?’, he asks. ‘2016! How many years ago? What to do with me now?’

There seemed to be genuine incredulity behind that objection, as if the past, for Jamal, had absolutely no bearing on the present, or indeed the future. A system that holds asylum seekers to be broadly benevolent and deserving of sympathy, in which it is far easier for bureaucrats to take them at their word than to justify in writing any nagging doubts they might have, is woefully ill-equipped for men like Jamal, for whom the truth is infinitely negotiable.

Jamal’s is not an isolated case. The BBC found more than 20 other smugglers residing in the UK, some of whom have convictions in Belgium, Germany and France. We can safely assume these individuals are themselves only a fraction of the full picture. Since Brexit, EU members have refused to share access to crime databases, such as Eurodac, which holds biometric data on individuals convicted of crimes in Europe.

Absent this data, it is hard to see how any asylum claim from Europe can be processed without the British public incurring the risks associated with indeterminate criminal backgrounds of their new neighbours. If the Home Office doesn’t know who these people are, how can the rest of us be expected to find out? This is a vast, reckless social experiment in which we have all been enlisted without our consent.

If Britain were a private company, entrusted with the care of vulnerable people, as it is, cases like Jamal’s would amount to criminal negligence. Fines would be issued and executives likely prosecuted. Yet as things stand, the anonymous officials who have allowed him to remain in the country face no penalty for having done so. The only punitive outcome will be absorbed by the people of Blaby, who can only hope Twana Jamal was exaggerating when he said, ‘This city is ours’.

Michael Murphy is a journalist at Outpost.