Lifetime on Benefits
The Sunday Times reports that the welfare state has spent around £400,000 looking after the family of the notorious murderer Mohammed Emwazi since his family came to the UK in 1994.
But if you ask me this is not so much a tale of jihadism, as a statement about the decadence of the west which can allow a family (any family) to remain on welfare benefits for 20 years even through long periods of full employment.
The reality is that the taps should have been turned off long ago and that's a separate issue from the scandal of paying deluded Islamists a 'jihadseeker's allowance'.
By hook or by crook, jihadists fleece Britain
Since their arrival here in 1994, we have spent about £400,000 on looking after Mohammed Emwazi’s family. How did he turn into a monster under our very noses, asks Tim Rayment
By Tim Rayment - The Sunday Times
Emwazi pictured when he was working in Kuwait in 2010
If the moss growing through the cracks in the stone front garden is a guide, the family of the world’s most wanted terrorist has never been fastidious in caring for the £600,000 London home provided for it by British taxpayers. The maisonette next door, with a few potted shrubs to offset the red brick of the terrace, shows greater pride.
Last week police reassured neighbours that there was now nobody behind the front door that Mohammed Emwazi, 26, closed for the last time before making his journey to become “Jihadi John”, the butcher of Syria. “We would like to provide reassurance to local residents that that address is currently unoccupied,” officers said in a letter, adding that patrols had been increased to counter fears of disorder. “We would not want any such events to cause division in our strong community.”
It was not just the locals asking questions. With Emwazi’s mother, brother and three sisters under police protection costing £5,000 a day, it was revealed that taxpayers had been funding the family for 20 years and are still believed to be paying as much as £40,000 a year in housing benefit, child benefit and child tax credits as well as jobseeker’s allowance.
The payments carried on even when Emwazi’s father, Jasem, returned to Kuwait, from where he had arrived in 1994 claiming a level of persecution that justified asylum. Another of Emwazi’s sisters is also in the Gulf state. A lawyer for Jasim said he was not working in Kuwait, implying that there is no income to send home and no impediment to a continuing life on benefits. Migration Watch, a think tank, assesses the likely total paid to the family in state support at more than £400,000.
We have been here before. In 2012 the TaxPayers’ Alliance, another research group, estimated that the extremist Abu Hamza, the former imam of a London mosque, had cost the taxpayer £2.75m in welfare, housing and legal benefits. This year he was sentenced to life in US prisons with no possibility of parole after being convicted of 11 terrorism offences.
At one time Abu Hamza’s family was living in a £600,000 council house in west London and claiming £680 a week in benefits. Five of his sons repaid this generosity with convictions for serious offences ranging from bomb-making to fraud and armed robbery.
Elsewhere in the world, Canada says it will revoke the passport of any citizen who travels overseas with the intention of joining an extremist group, to “ensure that the good name of Canada... is not associated with the menace of terrorism”. Right-wing senators in the US urge the passage of the Expatriate Terrorists Act, which would strip citizenship from anyone giving “material assistance” to an organisation that threatens the US.
Identity hidden under a balaclava, Emwazi brandishes a knife in an Isis video
While Emwazi, a naturalised Briton, has apparently beheaded two of his fellow citizens, a member of his west London terror cell — an Ethiopian group named only as “J1” — is able to use human rights law to avoid being deported to his native Africa. Yet court papers disclose that “on the morning of the failed London bombings of 21 July 2005, a mobile telephone which [J1] now accepts was used by him, was in contact with a telephone used by one of the bombers, Hussein Osman”.
To complete the picture, the Quaker-run Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust gave money for seven years to a Muslim human rights group that saw Emwazi as a “beautiful young man” who turned to decapitation because he was treated by this country as an outsider.
Has Britain gone soft?
EVEN on the left, the lavishing of taxpayer funds on the Emwazi and Hamza families causes horror because of what it does to public confidence. With more displaced people than at any time since the Second World War — 51m, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees — a case such as Emwazi’s undermines support for an asylum system already in trouble. Last October it was revealed that 11,000 asylum-seekers who have lived in Britain for more than seven years still await an initial Home Office decision on whether they can stay. The Commons public accounts committee reported that 29,000 applications dating back to 2007 are unresolved. Freedom of information requests last week laid bare the price: the cost of bed and board for asylum seekers has been running at £726,000 a day.
Housing benefit, the source of the biggest bill to the taxpayer for supporting the Emwazis, is also in chaos. An investigation in 2012 found it was open to fraud, with a group of Iraqi nationals who sought asylum in west London after the first Gulf War making near-identical claims of post-traumatic stress disorder to obtain housing benefit and disability allowance, possibly with the help of a complicit interpreter.
If the moss growing through the cracks in the stone front garden is a guide, the family of the world’s most wanted terrorist has never been fastidious in caring for the £600,000 London home provided for it by British taxpayers. The maisonette next door, with a few potted shrubs to offset the red brick of the terrace, shows greater pride.
Last week police reassured neighbours that there was now nobody behind the front door that Mohammed Emwazi, 26, closed for the last time before making his journey to become “Jihadi John”, the butcher of Syria. “We would like to provide reassurance to local residents that that address is currently unoccupied,” officers said in a letter, adding that patrols had been increased to counter fears of disorder. “We would not want any such events to cause division in our strong community.”
It was not just the locals asking questions. With Emwazi’s mother, brother and three sisters under police protection costing £5,000 a day, it was revealed that taxpayers had been funding the family for 20 years and are still believed to be paying as much as £40,000 a year in housing benefit, child benefit and child tax credits as well as jobseeker’s allowance.
The payments carried on even when Emwazi’s father, Jasem, returned to Kuwait, from where he had arrived in 1994 claiming a level of persecution that justified asylum. Another of Emwazi’s sisters is also in the Gulf state. A lawyer for Jasim said he was not working in Kuwait, implying that there is no income to send home and no impediment to a continuing life on benefits. Migration Watch, a think tank, assesses the likely total paid to the family in state support at more than £400,000.
We have been here before. In 2012 the TaxPayers’ Alliance, another research group, estimated that the extremist Abu Hamza, the former imam of a London mosque, had cost the taxpayer £2.75m in welfare, housing and legal benefits. This year he was sentenced to life in US prisons with no possibility of parole after being convicted of 11 terrorism offences.
At one time Abu Hamza’s family was living in a £600,000 council house in west London and claiming £680 a week in benefits. Five of his sons repaid this generosity with convictions for serious offences ranging from bomb-making to fraud and armed robbery.
Elsewhere in the world, Canada says it will revoke the passport of any citizen who travels overseas with the intention of joining an extremist group, to “ensure that the good name of Canada... is not associated with the menace of terrorism”. Right-wing senators in the US urge the passage of the Expatriate Terrorists Act, which would strip citizenship from anyone giving “material assistance” to an organisation that threatens the US.
Identity hidden under a balaclava, Emwazi brandishes a knife in an Isis video
While Emwazi, a naturalised Briton, has apparently beheaded two of his fellow citizens, a member of his west London terror cell — an Ethiopian group named only as “J1” — is able to use human rights law to avoid being deported to his native Africa. Yet court papers disclose that “on the morning of the failed London bombings of 21 July 2005, a mobile telephone which [J1] now accepts was used by him, was in contact with a telephone used by one of the bombers, Hussein Osman”.
To complete the picture, the Quaker-run Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust gave money for seven years to a Muslim human rights group that saw Emwazi as a “beautiful young man” who turned to decapitation because he was treated by this country as an outsider.
Has Britain gone soft?
EVEN on the left, the lavishing of taxpayer funds on the Emwazi and Hamza families causes horror because of what it does to public confidence. With more displaced people than at any time since the Second World War — 51m, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees — a case such as Emwazi’s undermines support for an asylum system already in trouble. Last October it was revealed that 11,000 asylum-seekers who have lived in Britain for more than seven years still await an initial Home Office decision on whether they can stay. The Commons public accounts committee reported that 29,000 applications dating back to 2007 are unresolved. Freedom of information requests last week laid bare the price: the cost of bed and board for asylum seekers has been running at £726,000 a day.
Housing benefit, the source of the biggest bill to the taxpayer for supporting the Emwazis, is also in chaos. An investigation in 2012 found it was open to fraud, with a group of Iraqi nationals who sought asylum in west London after the first Gulf War making near-identical claims of post-traumatic stress disorder to obtain housing benefit and disability allowance, possibly with the help of a complicit interpreter.
The Emwazi family also lived in a flat in Maida Vale, at taxpayers' expense
Overall, however, asylum-seekers are not associated with crime. A study by Brian Bell, associate professor in economics at Oxford University, found that as the proportion of asylum seekers in the population rises, there is a small rise in property crime (1.1% for every 1% rise in the share of the population) and no rise in violent crime. When you adjust for deprivation the difference in crime disappears. Poor refugees and poor Britons are more or less equal.
The Emwazis fled Kuwait after the first Gulf War, claiming persecution because, as members of the Bedoon stateless minority, they were seen as favouring the Iraqi invasion in 1990. They claimed asylum and won refugee status in 1996. Five years later they were made British citizens.
At the time the Bedoon were seen as needing protection, even if a Kuwaiti government official suggested last week that they had seen the war’s end as a chance to seek better economic opportunities under the banner of “human rights”.
Human Rights Watch in 1995 accused Kuwait of “institutionalised discrimination” against the Bedoon, describing the latter as “long-time inhabitants who have been denied Kuwaiti citizenship and are now being rendered stateless. Barred from employment, denied education for their children, restricted in their movements, and living under the constant threat of arbitrary arrest and deportation; Bedoons [sic] are a community of ‘have nots’ in one of the wealthiest countries of the world”. By 2013, however, Britain’s view was that the Bedoon were at risk only if they were undocumented.
Should asylum last for ever? Britain has 126,000 refugees, out of 16m worldwide. It is not a big number. Some think that, to protect public support for the principle, we should take much greater care to stop the highest-profile cases of abuse.
Overall, however, asylum-seekers are not associated with crime. A study by Brian Bell, associate professor in economics at Oxford University, found that as the proportion of asylum seekers in the population rises, there is a small rise in property crime (1.1% for every 1% rise in the share of the population) and no rise in violent crime. When you adjust for deprivation the difference in crime disappears. Poor refugees and poor Britons are more or less equal.
The Emwazis fled Kuwait after the first Gulf War, claiming persecution because, as members of the Bedoon stateless minority, they were seen as favouring the Iraqi invasion in 1990. They claimed asylum and won refugee status in 1996. Five years later they were made British citizens.
At the time the Bedoon were seen as needing protection, even if a Kuwaiti government official suggested last week that they had seen the war’s end as a chance to seek better economic opportunities under the banner of “human rights”.
Human Rights Watch in 1995 accused Kuwait of “institutionalised discrimination” against the Bedoon, describing the latter as “long-time inhabitants who have been denied Kuwaiti citizenship and are now being rendered stateless. Barred from employment, denied education for their children, restricted in their movements, and living under the constant threat of arbitrary arrest and deportation; Bedoons [sic] are a community of ‘have nots’ in one of the wealthiest countries of the world”. By 2013, however, Britain’s view was that the Bedoon were at risk only if they were undocumented.
Should asylum last for ever? Britain has 126,000 refugees, out of 16m worldwide. It is not a big number. Some think that, to protect public support for the principle, we should take much greater care to stop the highest-profile cases of abuse.
The imam and now convicted terrorist Abu Hamza is said to have cost the government £2.75m in welfare, legal and housing benefits
ONE option is to give refuge as a temporary measure. “Many countries provide temporary protection — you allow people to have asylum until the situation changes in their country of origin,” says Professor Alexander Betts, director of the Refugee Studies Centre at Oxford university. “Then there’s an expectation that they will return to their country of origin. That helps to avoid refugee protection becoming an alternative migratory route.
“So things can be done to make the system more credible in the public’s eyes. But we must recognise that the mark of a civilised country is to be prepared to protect the most desperate and vulnerable.”
The public is sensitive to any perception that benefits and public services are being abused. A Sunday Times poll by YouGov reveals today that four in five people (81%) support changing the rules so that benefits are unavailable to migrants who have been in Britain for fewer than two years, while two-thirds (66%) support changing them so that access to services such as schools and healthcare is unavailable to migrants not in work.
Tim Loughton, a former Tory minister, said Britain should consider temporary asylum as well as Canada’s actions to strip would-be terrorists of passports. “Asylum should not be a passport for life without conditions,” the MP for East Worthing and Shoreham said. “ If people abuse the laws and freedoms of the country that granted them hospitality, we should be able to say, ‘On your bike’. And there should be implications for their families.
“We have a proud tradition in this country of offering refuge to people genuinely fleeing danger but that is being undermined by people coming here, sticking two fingers up at our laws and traditions and supporting terrorist groups that want to undermine the very freedoms that have given them safe haven.”
Additional reporting: Josh Boswell, Dipesh Gadher, Nicholas Hellen and Marie Woolf
ONE option is to give refuge as a temporary measure. “Many countries provide temporary protection — you allow people to have asylum until the situation changes in their country of origin,” says Professor Alexander Betts, director of the Refugee Studies Centre at Oxford university. “Then there’s an expectation that they will return to their country of origin. That helps to avoid refugee protection becoming an alternative migratory route.
“So things can be done to make the system more credible in the public’s eyes. But we must recognise that the mark of a civilised country is to be prepared to protect the most desperate and vulnerable.”
The public is sensitive to any perception that benefits and public services are being abused. A Sunday Times poll by YouGov reveals today that four in five people (81%) support changing the rules so that benefits are unavailable to migrants who have been in Britain for fewer than two years, while two-thirds (66%) support changing them so that access to services such as schools and healthcare is unavailable to migrants not in work.
Tim Loughton, a former Tory minister, said Britain should consider temporary asylum as well as Canada’s actions to strip would-be terrorists of passports. “Asylum should not be a passport for life without conditions,” the MP for East Worthing and Shoreham said. “ If people abuse the laws and freedoms of the country that granted them hospitality, we should be able to say, ‘On your bike’. And there should be implications for their families.
“We have a proud tradition in this country of offering refuge to people genuinely fleeing danger but that is being undermined by people coming here, sticking two fingers up at our laws and traditions and supporting terrorist groups that want to undermine the very freedoms that have given them safe haven.”
Additional reporting: Josh Boswell, Dipesh Gadher, Nicholas Hellen and Marie Woolf
Police stand guard in Queen's Park, west London, where Mohammed Emwazi lived before he achieved notoriety as Jihadi John
Stateless in Kuwait: the Bedoon of the Gulf
The Bedoon — whose name means “without nationality” or “without citizenship” — are an ethnic group found in the Gulf Arab states and Iraq whose members are treated by several governments in the region as illegal immigrants.
Although many are of Bedouin origin, the two names have different roots. Most have never lived a nomadic life and have long settled in Kuwaiti towns.
Some 120,000 Bedoon claim Kuwaiti nationality, but the government says only 34,000 qualify. The others are considered natives of other countries who either migrated to the country after the discovery of oil five decades ago or their descendants.
They cannot legally obtain official documents and claim to suffer from various types of discrimination, including lack of access to public education, healthcare, housing or employment.
In recent years, they have held protests demanding Kuwaiti citizenship and police have dispersed them using force. Hundreds have been arrested.
The Bedoon — whose name means “without nationality” or “without citizenship” — are an ethnic group found in the Gulf Arab states and Iraq whose members are treated by several governments in the region as illegal immigrants.
Although many are of Bedouin origin, the two names have different roots. Most have never lived a nomadic life and have long settled in Kuwaiti towns.
Some 120,000 Bedoon claim Kuwaiti nationality, but the government says only 34,000 qualify. The others are considered natives of other countries who either migrated to the country after the discovery of oil five decades ago or their descendants.
They cannot legally obtain official documents and claim to suffer from various types of discrimination, including lack of access to public education, healthcare, housing or employment.
In recent years, they have held protests demanding Kuwaiti citizenship and police have dispersed them using force. Hundreds have been arrested.
