Sometimes cases come before the courts which encapsulate so much of what is wrong with our chaotic, dysfunctional, and frankly dangerous asylum system that they need to be highlighted. It is now clearly a case of total systems failure.
One case reported yesterday, demonstrates this more than most. It involved a predatory rapist who gave the unlikely name of Mohamed Mohamud Mohamed and who claimed to have fled Somalia in 2017.
Nobody actually knows where Mohamed is actually from, or if he is actually fleeing anything including the authorities of his country of origin, because like so many thousands of others landing in the country all the time, he has conveniently destroyed his passport.
The Irish Times reports: “He was in direct provision in Italy before being refused asylum in Germany, Italy and France. He travelled to the Netherlands, where he got a false Swedish passport, which he destroyed while travelling to Ireland.”
So this predator waltzed around five EU countries, giving two fingers to the Dublin Regulations – which are meant to ensure that an asylum application will be processed by the first member country the asylum seeker comes to. This is the definition of asylum shopping. Clearly, the regulations are regarded by asylum seekers – and in this they are likely egged on by NGOs – as some kind of a joke.
Having made his way to the Netherlands, Mohamed then decided to travel to Ireland on a false passport in 2022, which of course he destroyed before presenting himself at the Irish airport or port – again likely because he had been advised to do so by those who are making money from facilitating the free movement of migrants, or maybe by one of the many NGOs also filling their coffers by proclaiming the need for their services in supporting asylum applicants.
(As my colleague Matt Treacy reported last year: an EU Observer news site a “freedom of access” request to the EU agency Frontex revealed that 1,058 documents related to the investigation of human trafficking include references to named NGOs.)
Mohamed, the very definition of an “unvetted male” that local communities are concerned about, then applied for asylum in Ireland in February 2022 .
He “was placed in hotel accommodation in Dublin, where he lived until his arrest”, the Irish Times reported. He should, of course, have been put straight back on the plane and sent back to where he came from. And if he had, a young woman who was attacked in a Dublin city bar would have been spared this horrifying ordeal.
The Central Criminal Court heard that the young woman had asked to use the toilets in a bar in Dublin city at closing time and was told where they were located.
When she went into the toilet cubicle she found the door could not be locked, and she attempted to hold the door closed with her feet as she sat on the toilet. However, “Mohamed entered the cubicle and closed the door behind him, as the woman attempted to pull up her pants”.
Mohamed grabbed her by the wrist and appeared to be masturbating. He then attempted to rape her.
He asked her why she was screaming, telling her “I am saying please.” He also told her “Please, please, I need this.”
The woman continued to try to push him away and contemplated smashing the glass at him but feared she might be seen to be in the wrong if he was bleeding.
He blocked the door with his shoulder as she tried to get out, but she managed to get her phone. He inserted his fingers into her.
The woman finally managed to push him away and pull up her trousers. She ran from the toilet and alerted security but the offender had escaped.
Everything about this description of the digital rape and sexual assault is horrifying. The predatory actions of the rapist; his determination to assault a woman who screamed so much as she sought to fight him off that, the court heard, she lost the ability to scream or use the high-pitched register of her voice for months afterward; his twisted justification of his actions as he tried to force himself on her: “I am saying please.”
The judge, Mr Justice Paul McDermott, found that “Mohamed deliberately targeted the woman and followed her to the toilet, where his intention was clearly to rape and sexually assault her”. He described the asylum seeker’s actions as predatory.
[Justice McDermott] said she had endured a terrifying experience at the hands of a stranger who had followed her to the isolated and empty bathroom. He said the consequences for the woman had been devastating both emotionally and socially. She had lost her sense of security and safety in doing ordinary things.
“Terror accompanies her in ordinary everyday life,” he noted. He said she had shown a high degree of courage and considerable strength of character.
As I have written before on these pages, the devastating effect of sexual assault is sometimes underestimated. In her victim impact statement, the woman outlined in harrowing terms how Mohamed’s attack impacted her life.
She said she had attempted suicide, thinking she could not live without nightmares or fear. Her mental health was affected but she did not get help for a year as she refused to think about it.
She described how she had to turn down a job offer as she was unable to focus or work with a team full of men. She said the fear of something similar happening was unbearable.
She said she had been unable to feel happiness and spent a really long time at her lowest.
The court heard that Mohamed has no known previous convictions. But the truth is that we didn’t know his criminal record or what his history actually was because he had destroyed his identity, and because the Irish asylum system does not check his fingerprints against any criminal database.
That’s a fact that has been repeatedly and deliberately skewed by the media, by politicians and by NGOs, who repeatedly and falsely claimed that asylum seekers had their fingerprints checked against criminal databases.
As revealed by Gript’s investigations, while the International Protection Office (IPO) takes the asylum applicant’s fingerprints, they are only checked against two databases, Eurodac and SIS, and neither is a criminal database.
The truth is that thousands of people are now in the country without passports or identification and only a fool would believe that some of them at least are not bad actors who endanger the safety of Irish people, just as happened in this Dublin city bar.
The truth is, this is not an isolated case. In February of 2023, a man appeared before the courts charged with the sexual assault of a juvenile, but no-one seemed sure if he was from Moldova or Romania.
It’s also true that the inefficient, leaky, ridiculously overburdened asylum system is grossly unfair to genuine applicants and decent migrants precisely because it has allowed so many people to come here and be housed and avail of services even though they have destroyed their identification.
The court also heard that the asylum application of a man who was refused asylum in Germany, Italy and France has not yet been decided in this country. His barrister, paid for by the taxpayer, no doubt, said Mohamed would be serving his sentence as a foreign national in an Irish prison and asked the court to be as lenient as possible.
Lenient? He should be immediately deported – he can serve his sentence in a Somalian jail or in the prison system of wherever he came from.
And we need to have an honest, no-holds-barred, debate about how the current shambles is endangering Irish people.