British police seize Iraqi Kurd rape suspect who was not deported

Andrew Norfolk:

An Iraqi Kurd being sought for attempted murder and the rape of a 15-year-old girl, who should have been deported when he was released from prison last year, has been arrested.

Caliph Ali Asmar was held during a search of an address in central Hull at around 10.30pm last night.

A Humberside Police spokeswoman said he was arrested with four other men as a result of a call from a member of the public who saw the appeals for assistance through the media.

Mr Asmar, 25, a failed asylum-seeker, was jailed for two years in March last year for unlawful wounding and possessing an offensive weapon.

A judge at Hull Crown Court recommended that he should be deported after completing his sentence. Asmar served eight months and was then released for good behaviour.

He is now the prime suspect in the attempted murder at Easter of a 38-year-old Latvian man who was stabbed twice in the shoulder and chest. Detectives also want to question him about an attack in Hull in March when a girl was dragged into a car by two men and raped.

Home Office sources said last night that Asmar had been considered for deportation on his release in November but no action was taken. The sources were unable to give the reason.

David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, said last night that Asmar’s case illustrated the extra dangers to which the public had been exposed. "There can be no excuse for the extraordinary incompetence of the Home Office in allowing this man into the community when he was recommended for deportation," he said. Diana Johnson, MP for Hull North, said that she would be raising the case with the Home Office.

On Tuesday it was disclosed that Mustaf Jama, 25, the prime suspect in the murder of PC Sharon Beshenivsky in Bradford in November, was released from prison a few months earlier and allowed to stay in Britain because, the Home Office said, it was too dangerous to return him to Somalia.

West Yorkshire police believe he could be back in Somalia, from where it would would be impossible to extradite him.

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