We should have an enquiry into the Lawangeen Abdulrahimzai case

Britain's dysfunctional state prefers to pass "Martyn's Law", rather than fixing glaring problems which are putting us at risk

Today the Commons will nod through the second reading of Martyn’s Law, a piece of legislation which will require all venues with a capacity of more than 200 people (so things like big village halls) to have a plan for how they will prevent terrorism.

The Home Office Select Committee - which was Labour-led at the time - was damming about this legislation, saying it had:

“serious concerns about the proportionality of the Bill, especially in relation to the impact on smaller businesses, voluntary and community-run organisations in the standard tier premises, where there is a lack of evidence that the Bill will adequately reduce the threat of terrorism for smaller organisations.”

The legislation is named after Martyn Hett, who was killed alongside 21 others in the 2017 Manchester Arena attack.

My heart goes out to his family who have campaigned for this law, and to everyone else killed or traumatised by it.

But for exactly that reason we have to be honest with people about what will and won’t help to keep people safe from terrorism.

There are many lessons to learn from the Manchester arena bombing, and there were multiple failures of immigration policy, policing and the intelligence services:

• The two men responsible had participated in the Libyan Civil war and had met with members of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, yet were able to re-enter the UK.

• They were from a family and circle with a history of extremism - Mostafa Graf, the imam of the Didsbury Mosque where Abedi and his family were regulars, made a call for armed jihad 10 days before Abedi bought his concert ticket.

• The police went out to get kebabs at a critical moment.

• A security guard saw Salman Abedi and thought he was suspicious but did nothing because he was concerned about being called racist. The BBC reported his comments:

"I did not want people to think I am stereotyping him because of his race.

"I was scared of being wrong and being branded a racist if I got it wrong and would have got into trouble. It made me hesitant.

"I wanted to get it right and not mess it up by over-reacting or judging someone by their race."

The bomb parts were paid for by them using their mum’s benefits - she had been receiving tax credits, child and housing benefit of about £550 a week, even though she left the UK for Libya in October 2016 (suggesting exit checks aren’t working properly).

So yes, there were many lessons to learn from this, and other cases.

But instead, we are going to legislate to require village halls and a million other tiny volunteer organisations to have “anti-terrorism plans”, backed up by the threat of a £10,000 fine if you don’t come up with the paperwork.

As a minister - particularly in Health - I met with families who had been the victims of terrible tragedies. To try and make at least something good come out of something terrible is a very natural and understandable reaction. But to truly honour victims we have to learn the right lessons.

I don’t have a problem with large venues having their staff trained in first aid.

I do object to the creation of unnecessary bureaucracy for churchwardens and little voluntary groups.

But an even greater problem with this law is that it is a displacement activity and that we are passing this legislation - sold as preventing terrorism - while not doing some very obvious things that really would actually prevent terrorism.

For example, here is a different case where we are simultaneously refusing to learn the lessons of.

On 12 March 2022 Lawangeen Abdulrahimzai murdered aspiring Royal Marine Thomas Roberts in Bournemouth town centre.

Born in Afghanistan, Abdulrahimzai had travelled through many countries illegally. In February 2017, he was convicted of two drug offences in Italy and handed a suspended sentence. He ended up in Serbia in June 2017.

In 2019 his claim for asylum in Norway was rejected, and the same month he entered the UK illegally. He was 18 but claimed to be 14. (ECHR blocks many means of testing real age.)

He was put into foster care, and despite warnings from police continued to carry a knife. (The courts have largely ignored 2015 legislation intended to mandate jail time for this.) After an incident with his foster parents which police were forced to attend he was moved to a different carer.

The Home Office's Prevent anti-terrorism task group was told Abdulrahimzai was "susceptible to terrorism" in 2021.

But beyond all these grotesque failures of the British state, came the most glaring failure. It was not until after Tom Roberts’ death that Abdulrahimzai’s fingerprints were shared with Interpol, revealing his prior conviction for a previous double homicide in Serbia.

Dolores Wallace-Roberts, Tom’s mother, has said:

“I am very disappointed by the coroner’s decision not to resume the investigation into his death. It is unfair. "The Home Office don't want to engage with us. They are accountable and there is negligence there but they just block any attempts to find out more."

"I have very serious concerns about how Border Force checks the identity of those arriving in England and whether they are criminals and how BCP Council checks the ages of those claiming to be children.

"I have concerns about the response of Dorset Police to a report of someone carrying a machete in a public place and the failure of the authorities to check and share information, which allows the status quo to continue.

"Everything is wrong in this country and it will continue to happen again."

She is right.

There should obviously be an inquiry into this.

Things are going massively wrong if the police only find out that someone they fingerprint on the way into the country is guilty of murder after he kills someone else. Home Office / Border Force / Police processes are obviously broken somewhere for this to be allowed to happen.

We should obviously change things so this doesn’t happen again.

Yet I see no sign of a proper inquiry or curiosity from the Home Office about how they could do things differently.

Tony Smith, the former head of Border Force, argued for just this:

“we need to understand why his asylum claim in an EU country - and his conviction for murder in Serbia - were only discovered by the police and not by fingerprint checks on arrival; and what we can do to remedy this in future.”

The British state is just so dysfunctional.

We won’t investigate or fix problems that are just a glaring risk to public safety.

But we are happy to create burdens for small community groups that are totally disproportionate and irrelevant to tackling the problem of terrorism.