Man who wrote forward for book urging killing of Jews gets UK asylum

The government has failed in its latest bid to deny refugee status to a man who wrote a foreword for a book arguing Jews should be killed.

Officials at the Home Office had sought to deny Yasser Al-Siri asylum, whom they argued could be a “danger to the security of the United Kingdom”, and instead grant him restricted leave to remain for six months. This would have required him to obtain written permission from Home Secretary Priti Patel before moving house, starting a job, or studying.

But in a ruling published last week, judges at the Court of Appeal decided that fresh claims of extremism advanced by the government were not sufficient to overturn a 2015 tribunal decision in Al-Siri’s favour.

Al-Siri, who faces the death penalty in his native Egypt, first claimed asylum in the UK in 1994.

He was later indicted with conspiracy to murder General Ahmad Shah Masoud, the leader of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan two days before the 9/11 attacks, whose assassination was allegedly ordered by Osama Bin Laden to “cut off the most obvious source of support for US retaliation.”

A British judge threw the case out, saying there was a lack of evidence Al-Siri was knowingly involved and not duped.

An immigration tribunal in 2015 established that 2,000 copies of books espousing “the killing of Jews” which were found at Al Siri’s personal and business addresses could be considered among “circumstantial evidence of [his] sympathy for extremist views.”

But it added this “did not overcome the absence of reliable evidence of his culpable involvement in the assassination of General Masoud,” and ruled he could not therefore be excluded from refugee status.

The Home Office again refused to grant Al Siri refugee status on national security grounds in 2018, alleging he had “advocated the use of violent jihad” on social media.

But appeal judges have now found that the new claims of extremism are not enough to overturn the previous verdict.

“The starting point is that an unappealed Tribunal decision is final and binding and must be accepted and implemented by the Home Secretary, unless there is a good basis for impugning that decision,” ruled Lord Justice Phillips on February 8.

A spokesperson for Priti Patel’s department told Jewish News: “We are disappointed with this judgement and are carefully considering our next steps.”