Anti-Immigration Riots Have Erupted In The UK After A Sudanese Refugee Stabbed A Northern Irish Man
Hundreds of people, many masked, gathered at multiple locations across Belfast and set fire to a bus, several cars and a building near the city centre.
Anti-immigrant riots have erupted in Northern Ireland, with people setting fire to homes, vehicles and a bus in Belfast after a Sudanese refugee was arrested for stabbing a local man, with the unrest spreading to cities across Scotland and England.
On the evening of Monday, June 8, a 30-year-old Sudanese man named Hadi Alodid attacked 40-year-old Stephen Ogilvie on a residential street in north Belfast with a kitchen knife.
Bystanders wrestled Alodid, who entered Northern Ireland from Ireland in 2023 and was granted a five-year permit to remain after claiming asylum, away from Ogilvie and held him until police arrived.
Ogilvie was hospitalized with serious injuries to his face, neck and back and lost his left eye.
Belfast police said the attack was not being treated as terrorism and declared it a "critical incident," meaning the attack required urgent coordinated response across agencies, and credited the people who wrestled Alodid with saving Ogilvie’s life.
Graphic video of the attack spread online within hours, sparking outrage.
Hours after the attack, far-right figures, including Tommy Robinson, the former leader of the now disbanded English Defence League (EDL), which rejects the fact that ethnic people can be English, shared the attack video and called for demonstrations across the UK on X.
On Tuesday evening, June 9, hundreds of people, many masked, gathered at multiple locations across Belfast and set fire to a bus, several cars and a building near the city centre.
Rioters set up checkpoints on some streets to search foreign nationals and threw petrol bombs after setting bins alight, according to AFP.
Belfast police said families had to be helped to escape a burning house on Tuesday.
The unrest continued on Wednesday, June 10, with police using water cannons on protesters in Belfast who threw rocks and bottles at officers.
Anti-immigrant protests linked to the Belfast attack also broke out in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Ayr in Scotland and in Southampton in southern England.
Local politicians and community leaders said that rioters targeted mostly Black people.
Northern Ireland's first minister Michelle O'Neill called the scenes "nothing less than disgusting cowardice."
UK prime minister Keir Starmer called the attack "horrific" and "sickening" and condemned the riots that followed.
Ogilvie's family has appealed for calm, saying they did not want the attack used "to divide people or fuel hostility."
"We have many migrants who make a deeply valuable contribution to our country," the Ogilvie family said in a statement. "We do not want this terrible tragedy to be used to divide people or fuel hostility."
Alodid was charged with attempted murder, possession of a bladed weapon in a public place and making threats to kill an NHS worker.
He has been detained in custody until July 8.
Cherry Mohamed
Sofia Hou
Kassy Cho
