CLARE FOGES: The unhinged Sudanese asylum seeker who brutally stabbed an innocent woman 30 times should never have been allowed on our streets. This is the question all women across Britain are now asking

Most women will know how frightening it is to walk home alone at night.Shadows in doorways. Keys bunched in your fist as a makeshift weapon. Running down the street, heart hammering. Is that someone following? Making it to your front door unharmed is sweet relief.Not so for the 32-year-old woman who was walking home alone after a meal out in Leeds in March 2024.Suddenly, she was grabbed from behind. Her attacker stabbed her 30 times with a broken glass bottle, slashing her in a way witnesses described as ‘frenzied’.Her ‘blood-curdling screams’ were so loud they were heard by security men at a nearby pub, who came to her rescue and punched him unconscious.The attacker, Ibrahim Albashir, has catatonic schizophrenia and is originally from Sudan. He arrived in this country via Libya, Italy and France after having, according to the judge, ‘used the services of people smugglers’. (Don’t you love how this makes it sound like he used a reputable travel brand?)In France, this individual had spent time in a mental hospital and was sensibly refused asylum.In Britain, he drifted through Luton, Coventry, Birmingham and Barrow-in-Furness before making it to Leeds. There, two days before the attack, a police officer found him in a ‘trance-like state’ with his trousers around his ankles. Any action taken? No, move along, sir. Ibrahim Albashir, who arrived in the UK after he was refused asylum in France, stabbed a woman 30 times with a broken glass bottle The Government handed out a pamphlet to asylum seekers advising them not to rape women, ‘harass people’ or ‘follow someone’There was also a sexual assault in a Birmingham hotel, and another in the hospital where he was held. Oh, and he exposed himself to a doctor.Of Albashir’s vile attack on the lone woman in Leeds, the judge said: ‘The common-sense conclusion is that there was a sexual element to the attack.’ In short, this very dangerous man was waving more red flags than a Communist rally.Why was he free to roam the streets in the first place? Which authorities were aware of his whereabouts? And how many others like him are drifting around our towns today: unmonitored, unsafe, unhinged?The response of millions of Britons to the story of Ibrahim Albashir will be: ‘Another one?’ Time and again we read of those – invariably working-age men – who have come here to ‘flee danger’ but end up bringing it with them.Take Khan Agah, 19, and Noorullah Ahmdzai, 26, Afghan asylum seekers convicted this month for setting upon a couple who were on their first date stargazing in a London park. While holding a knife to the man’s throat, they took turns to rape the woman, telling her they ‘wanted to have some fun’.Or Eritrean Bruke Desalagne, 33, who dragged an elderly man behind a church and raped him for 20 minutes.Or Mohammed Abdullah, 19, a migrant who dragged a teenage girl into a public lavatory in Bournemouth and raped her. Or Abdul Khan, a 28-year-old Afghan asylum seeker jailed for raping a 13-year-old in Nottingham.All these crimes have been reported in recent weeks. There are countless more.One particularly awful case was that of Pakistani Sheraz Malik, 28, who raped an ‘obviously vulnerable’ 18-year-old in a Nottinghamshire park, shortly after she had been raped by another man Malik was with but who has not been identified. When she tried to resist, Malik smacked her in the face, afterwards repeatedly calling her a ‘slut’.A pre-sentence report noted that Malik displayed ‘distorted thinking… in relation to consent, personal entitlement and the objectification of women’. You don’t say.Anyone reading of these crimes may reasonably conclude that a lot of these men display ‘distorted thinking’. Many were raised in cultures where women are second-class citizens; where females drinking alcohol would be immoral; where those not covered head to toe in Islamic dress are considered whores.Let me be clear: This is not about race, but culture.Yes, most of the thousands upon thousands of men arriving on our shores are not sexual predators. Many simply want a better life. And yes, many British men have shown they are equally capable of sick and sadistic acts.But to deny the connection between culture and criminal conduct is to gaslight the public.An analysis of a Freedom of Information (FOI) request made to the Metropolitan Police by the Centre For Migration Control, published last year, indicated charge rates in London broken down by nationality.While the rate for British nationals per 10,000 of the population was 6.5, among Afghans it was 74; Eritreans, 66; Algerians, 56; Somalians, 55; and Sudanese, 43.In fact, the Government itself has even made this connection explicit by handing out a pamphlet to asylum seekers advising them not to rape women, ‘harass people’ or ‘follow someone’.This nine-page booklet, entitled Understanding Behaviours And Expectations In The UK, is not being handed out at football stadiums or branches of Halfords or other places men tend to congregate. It is being given out at asylum centres. The reason is obvious.Earlier this week, leader of Essex County Council Peter Harris wrote a compelling account of his visit to Wethersfield Airfield Asylum Accommodation in these pages, where 800 asylum seekers are sheltered, fed and taken for ‘day trips’ into towns in a fleet of 17 minibuses.Most of them arrived through Manston Asylum Processing Centre in Kent, where they underwent biometric testing. But as Harris wrote: ‘DNA samples are not taken.‘When I inquired about this, I was told that it might contravene their human rights, despite the obvious help it would offer the police if any of the migrants go on to commit crimes.’Reading of this maddeningly stupid oversight, my mind returned to the teenager raped by Sheraz Malik and that other man he was with – so far unidentified. Presumably, Rapist B is still at large and a serious threat to women. Perhaps he will stalk the streets tonight, looking for another victim.Left-wingers like to accuse journalists like me of peddling fact-lite fantasy, patching together disparate crimes to misrepresent reality.It certainly would be good to have better, objective data when writing about this issue. But, unfortunately, our own government is refusing to release it.Though the Information Commissioner has ruled that data on foreign offending between 2018-24 must be revealed, the Ministry of Justice has gone to court – at our expense – to suppress it.Which means, aside from data received via FOI by bodies such as the Centre For Migration Control, we have precious little to work with.While the Government fights to keeps information locked away, we can only wonder at the uncomfortable truths it might contain – truths which would only inflame public anger.The British public are right to be angry. We are angry at the persistently pathetic approach to our borders; angry when we read stories of women whose lives have been shattered at the hands of men who arrived here illegally; angry at those who refuse to look this problem full in the face for fear of looking ‘racist’.Cowardly cover-ups for the sake of ‘cultural sensitivity’ have hurt too many women and girls before. They must not do so again.