Last week, a UK court sentenced an asylum seeker to 15 years in jail after he raped a 12-year-old girl in broad daylight.
Ahmad Mulakhil, (23) who had reached the UK on a boat only four months before raping the child in July last year, spotted her on some swings in a park before abducting and sexually assaulting her in a cul-de-sac in Nuneaton, Warwickshire.
Last month, a jury found Mulakhil guilty of one count of rape of a female child under 13, abducting a child, two counts of sexual assault and one count of taking indecent photos of a child. They also found him not guilty of one of the counts of rape of a child under 13.
He had previously pleaded guilty to one count of rape of a child under 13 at an earlier court hearing, according to Warwickshire police.
Gript readers may already be aware that there is a law on the Irish statute books which prevents the public identification of anyone who is an asylum seeker in this jurisdiction.
In other words, if this monster had raped the child in Ireland, you would have either learned his name or that an anonymous asylum seeker had raped a young girl, or neither, because our laws would have protected this information.
As things stand, there is no provision in the law, Section 26 of the International Protection Act 2015, to allow for the publication of the names of anyone who is an international protection applicant, be they rapist, murderer, or someone with “terror convictions”, as in the following case.
Last October, a man with terrorism convictions, who was deported from the UK, showed up in Ireland having claimed asylum – we were told that he couldn’t be named because of that claim.
Gript have written before on this topic as it relates to the effect this law has on the ability of Irish journalists to share relevant information with the public, as is our duty.
Unbelievable as it may sound, even when an individual has serious convictions such as terrorism or human trafficking, their asylum claim trumps your right to know who is in Ireland.
Contravention of these rules can lead to summary conviction, including a class A fine (up to €5,000) or a maximum prison term of 12 months, or both.
Call me cynical, but I can’t help but think that if I were genuinely fleeing persecution, I would do everything to avoid being hauled before the criminal courts, which is a hive of reporters and photographers whose job it is to make the court’s clientele famous.
I also doubt that Al Qaeda or Al Shabaab are avid Gript readers, but the internet can be quite a bitch when you have something to hide.
The UK doesn’t seem to have the same problem: While criticism has been levelled at police forces for allegedly shying away from mentioning the immigration status of crime suspects, the UK media appears to be free to name those charged or convicted with crimes as asylum seekers.
Although the Irish law has been on the books for over a decade now, up until quite recently, details about asylum status were included in many court reports, even from the most mainstream of Irish outlets, because the penny hadn’t dropped.
Now that the penny is on the floor, which appears to have resulted from media lawyers suddenly taking notice of the law, reporters are left with the choice of naming the accused or reporting on an international protection applicant who remains anonymous.
A savvy reader might be able to pick up on the asylum component if they read between the lines or know what telltale keywords to look out for, but is it really appropriate for Irish court reporters who want to tell the full story to have to leave vague clues and hints in fact-based reporting?
As I have written before, I believe that someone being an asylum seeker is at least as relevant to a story as someone being a nurse, a teacher, a Garda, or a veterinarian. Arguably, it’s even more relevant as the choice of who we let into our country is fundamentally a political one, and the public deserves to see the consequences of that choice. Stories need context, and the first rule of writing a good story is that information about those involved is a vital component.”
I think Irish news readers deserve to know the full story.