Clash in Northern Ireland After Neck-Cutting Video, Anti-Muslim Graffiti Appears

Northern Ireland was hit overnight, between Wednesday and Thursday, by another night of unrest sparked by a video showing a Sudanese migrant trying to behead a British citizen earlier this week. More than 100 protesters gathered since last night at several points in Belfast, the Northern Irish capital, and on Glenmory Street in the north of the city they threw objects, bricks and glass bottles at security forces. A trash bin was also set on fire. Police used water cannons to disperse the rioters.

The violence that struck the area the day before yesterday and the previous night was not seen this time in central Belfast. Last night, the family of the victim, Stephen Ogilvy, called on the public to stop the violence and calm the tensions, but by evening the strain was still visible in Belfast: many shops and restaurants remained closed, and empty streets were seen in the city center. Islamophobic graffiti appeared on the walls and metal shutters of closed businesses.

The unrest in Northern Ireland broke out the day before yesterday after the circulation on social media of a video showing a Sudanese migrant named Hadi Al-Udid trying to murder a man in broad daylight on Monday in Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland, one of the four territories that make up the United Kingdom, along with England, Wales and Scotland. In the footage, Al-Udid, in his 30s, is seen crouching in the middle of the road over the victim, Stephen Ogilvy, 44, raising a knife in the air while his other hand forcibly holds Ogilvy beneath him, his face covered in blood. In the background, a passerby can be heard shouting at the attacker, “Get off him, you rat!” But he lowers the hand holding the knife and makes cutting motions around the victim’s neck, while another passerby shouts, “He’s trying to cut his head off!” Seconds later, three passersby intervene, one striking Al-Udid with a stick while another kicks him in the head, until he lies on the ground and stops moving.

Al-Udid was later arrested by police and is now accused of attempted murder of Ogilvy, as well as threatening to kill a medical worker, a radiology technician who treated injuries he himself suffered during the attack. According to testimony, he told the technician, “I will kill you.” Yesterday, Al-Udid was brought before a judge, and the indictment against him was read to him with the help of an Arabic interpreter. He was offered legal representation, but declined, and his detention was ultimately extended until July 8. At this stage, his motives are unclear, although police said they have not found any sign so far that this was an Islamist terror attack.

The attempted murder in Belfast comes against a backdrop of turmoil over the issue of migrants. This issue is one of the main reasons for the rise in the polls of the hard-right Reform UK party, led by Nigel Farage, which has made the fight against both illegal and legal immigration a central plank, arguing that British culture itself is under threat from the wave of migrants that governments in London have struggled for years to stop, both under the Conservatives and under Labour today.

The attack also took place as Britain remains shaken by the murder of young white man Henry Novak, after footage revealed this month showed police handcuffing him while he was bleeding to death and shouting that he could not breathe, while at the same time speaking with the person who stabbed him, a Sikh youth who accused Novak, unjustly, of “racism” against him. That case sparked enormous criticism of the authorities over claims of institutional discrimination against white people, out of excessive sensitivity toward migrants and minority groups.

British media reported that the Sudanese attacker Al-Udid arrived in Belfast at the beginning of 2023 from Dublin, the capital of the Republic of Ireland, which is a separate political entity from Northern Ireland, taking advantage of the fact that there is a free border crossing between the two, without checks or passport control, by virtue of the Good Friday Agreement, which ended decades of violence between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland in the 1990s. He had previously arrived in Dublin by plane from Paris at an unknown date. Upon arriving in Belfast he applied for asylum, and in September 2023 his request was approved and he was granted a five-year UK residence visa as a refugee.

Following the previous night’s severe riots, during which hundreds of rioters set fire to vehicles, bins and homes of migrants, forcing foreign residents to flee to safety after breaking down their doors, smashing their windows and shouting “Foreigners out!”, police in Britain were deployed in reinforced numbers in Belfast overnight, with additional forces expected to arrive from across the United Kingdom during the day. Although the scale of the violence overnight was smaller, rioters continued to sow chaos at several points. Masked demonstrators were seen, among other things, tearing bricks from house walls and smashing pavements with hammers to throw the stones at police.

Britain fears more riots in the coming days in additional areas of the country, after anti-migrant protests were also held since Tuesday in London, Manchester and Southampton. Yesterday, initial charges were filed against three men who attacked people on Tuesday because of the color of their skin in Glasgow, Scotland. British officials have blamed, among others, the far-right activist Tommy Robinson and billionaire Elon Musk for inciting the unrest. Musk is a prominent anti-immigration activist who frequently speaks out on the issue on his X social network, which he owns, and calls on Europeans to take to the streets to protest what, according to him, their leaders are doing to them.

British media meanwhile continue to reveal details about Stephen Ogilvy, who was attacked by the Sudanese migrant Al-Udid. It was already reported yesterday that he lived in the same apartment building as the attacker, a building that belongs to a public housing project. Ogilvy’s neighbors said he suffered from various problems and was deaf in one ear and lived alone. One of them testified that last year his home window was smashed by a drug addict who threw a stone into the house early in the morning. According to testimony, the Sudanese attacker Al-Udid moved into the building only about a week ago, while Ogilvy had been due to move to another company apartment on June 15.

In Britain it was revealed last night that 25 years ago, in 2001, Ogilvy was the victim of another horrific attack, in which a drug dealer poured aftershave on him in a Scottish apartment and then set him on fire. The attacker, David McClave, then 21, caused Ogilvy to take a date-rape drug, burned him between the toes with a lit cigarette, then stripped the unconscious Ogilvy, poured aftershave on him and set him alight. When Ogilvy woke up, he found his head and groin engulfed in flames, while the sadistic McClave recorded the horrific attack on video. Following the incident, Ogilvy fled back to his native Northern Ireland, where he reported what had happened to the authorities. McClave was sentenced to 14 years in prison.

After this week’s attack, Ogilvy was hospitalized in critical condition, suffering significant injuries and cuts to his face, neck and back. During the attack he lost his left eye, but his condition is now described as stable. Last night his family issued a statement calling for an end to the violence, and stressed that migrants “make a valuable contribution to our country.” It added, “We do not want this terrible tragedy to be used to divide people or stir up hostility.”

Activists against immigration have emphasized the fact that the attacker Al-Udid entered Britain in 2023 thanks to the CTA, the Common Travel Area, which is part of the Good Friday Agreement that ended in 1998 decades of violence in Northern Ireland between Irish republican militants, British unionists and British security forces, violence in which nearly 3,600 people were killed. This mechanism provides for freedom of movement between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland and therefore to Britain as a whole, without the need for passport checks. This means that anyone who reaches the Republic of Ireland can, within a day or two, get easily to London, Manchester or any other city in Britain.

Following the disclosure of the Sudanese attacker’s route, calls are now again growing in Britain to review the CTA mechanism. Chris Philp of the Conservative Party, who serves as shadow home secretary, stressed that the meaning of the Common Travel Area is that Britain relies on Ireland to secure its border, and therefore “any weakness in the Irish border is also a weakness in our border.” He said that “clearly much more needs to be done to stop the CTA being used as a back door into Britain for illegal migrants.”

At the same time, the Daily Mail today emphasizes the fact that Al-Udid received asylum in Britain under a controversial “fast track” program that came into force during the Conservative government of Rishi Sunak. Under that program, he was only required to fill out a 10-page Home Office questionnaire instead of going through the standard, and far more rigorous, in-person interview process. The aim of the program was to quickly clear 92,000 asylum claims that had piled up on the desk.

The program, which is still operating, was overseen at the time by then-home secretary Suella Braverman and then-immigration minister Robert Jenrick, both of whom have since defected to Farage’s hard-right UK Reform party. Because of the huge number of asylum seekers who were granted refugee status under the program, some Home Office staff privately referred to it as a “status-granting factory.”