An asylum seeker who was subject to police bail conditions after being accused of rape at a migrant hotel has “gone missing” after U.K. authorities failed to securely transfer him from one hotel to another, it has emerged.
The 39-year-old suspect was due to return to a police station in north-east London in early January for further questioning, after being accused of raping a teenage boy at a hotel housing asylum seekers in the London borough of Waltham Forest.
Remix News reported on the initial story earlier this month when news of the attack, which took place on Oct. 5, came to light. Labour MP Diane Abbott sparked fury by suggesting attacks such are these are “what happens when you demonize migrants” in a swipe at Home Secretary Suella Braverman.
The Telegraph newspaper reported that the suspect was transferred to another hotel accommodating asylum seekers in Buckingham, about 125 kilometers away. However, according to Greg Smith, the Conservative MP for Buckingham, the suspect had not been escorted by police to the new hotel and his whereabouts is now unknown.
Smith told the House of Commons on Tuesday: “Buckinghamshire Council learned third-hand from a London borough just this morning that an asylum seeker who is under investigation for a very serious offense was transferred to the asylum hotel in Buckingham. He was not escorted into the premises and has since gone missing.”
Smith blasted the blunder as “wholly unacceptable” and called on U.K. authorities to locate the man and place him in “secure accommodation” as long as necessary.
The Metropolitan Police and the U.K. Home Office were quick to dissolve themselves of blame, with the Telegraph reporting that the “Met Police maintains the Home Office is responsible for transport and accommodation and that it was wrong to suggest officers should have escorted him to the hotel.”
Meanwhile, a comment from the Home Office read: “The bail conditions of this suspect is a matter for the police and we do not have any powers to detain him. There is no evidence he has absconded.”
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Sadly, there have been multiple reports of rape and sexual assault from facilities housing predominantly large groups of adult males claiming asylum in the U.K. after arriving in small boats via the English Channel.
Another case of sexual assault at the same hotel in Waltham Forest in September saw a male claiming to be 17 arrested and charged with one count of sexual touching of a child under 13.
An Eritrean national seeking asylum in the U.K. was jailed for nine years earlier this month for the rape of a woman on a night out in Wigan. He had been residing at a hotel on the outskirts of the town, which had been block-booked by the Home Office to accommodate migrants.
The same hotel had been subject to complaints made by both nearby residents and local Labour MP Lisa Nandy for inappropriate behavior by groups of males who would watch school girls during their P.E. lessons at the secondary school located nearby. There were further reports of one girl being surrounded by a group of men and harassed on her walk home from school.
And a local council in Derbyshire recently wrote to the Home Office to question the appropriateness of housing asylum seekers in a hotel in the small town of Sandiacre after reports of a group of asylum seekers causing a disturbance at the local dental clinic and using nearby parks and woods as toilets.
The Home Office has now block-booked more than 200 hotels across Britain and Northern Ireland to temporarily house individuals entering Britain via small boats and claiming asylum, along with resettled Afghans; the move is costing U.K. taxpayers around £7 million a day.
Home Office figures revealed that more than 37,000 migrants are currently being accommodated in hotels, and the number continues to rise every day as more arrivals are picked up in the English Channel and escorted to Britain.
The latest figures from the beginning of this week put the number of arrivals via the English Channel so far this year at 41,769, with a further 30,000 supposedly thwarted by French police patrolling that country’s northern beaches.
