Implications of Britain granting asylum to terrorist Yasser el-Sirri

Hossam al-Haddad

Despite what appeared to be a tougher stance and a viable strategy against Islamist extremism in the UK, a British appeals court granted political asylum to Egyptian-born terrorist Yasser el-Sirri.

Sirri won a 27-year legal battle for asylum in Britain when a panel of three judges rejected the Department of Homeland Security’s objections.

Sirri was convicted in absentia by an Egyptian military court in 1994 and sentenced to death on charges of plotting to kill the Egyptian prime minister. The court said that the refugee status applies to anyone who fears being persecuted if returned to his homeland, but it does not apply to persons “guilty of committing acts inconsistent with the purposes and principles of the United Nations,” which is the reason that Sirri has been prevented from obtaining asylum so far.

In addition to the conspiracy against the prime minister, Sirri is suspected of helping facilitate the assassination of Afghan Taliban opponent Ahmed Shah Masoud, which happened two days before the September 11, 2001 attacks. British investigators searched his home and office and found “2,000 copies of a book adopting the killing of Jews, containing an introduction to his (Sirri’s) books. It was published by the Islamic Monitoring Center, which was founded by Sirri, and was written by the head of the banned Egyptian terrorist group Al-Jama’a Al-Islamiyya.

The court ruling indicated that even as his asylum battle continued, Sirri published a statement in 2015 calling for “the use of violent jihad as a duty of Muslims.”

The appeal verdict stated that “these matters showed that Sirri continued to adopt unacceptable extremist views.”

He openly supported the Egyptian-born terrorist Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing who was sentenced to life imprisonment in the United States for plotting an “urban terror war.”

Sirri was charged in the United States in 2003 on charges of conspiring to provide material support to Al-Jama’a Al-Islamiyya by distributing messages about the group to and from Abdel-Rahman.

Regarding Abdel-Rahman, Sirri told Front Line on PBS in October 2001, “He was a victim of a conspiracy in the United States and was wrongly imprisoned in the United States,” adding, “It is an insult to Muslims. If he dies in prison, there will be a lot of problems for the United States in the Muslim world.” Abdel-Rahman died in prison in 2017.

Commenting on the court ruling, UK Reform Party leader Nigel Farage said in a video, “Despite the danger posed by Sirri, this man will be allowed to remain in the UK as a refugee.”

The United Kingdom banned the death penalty for murders decades ago and refused to hand over two British ISIS elements suspected of killing Western hostages to the United States in 2018 without promising that the two men would not face the death penalty or be sent to the Guantanamo Bay military prison, and this clause was issued this past summer.

Sirri is not the only Egyptian extremist who has been granted asylum in Britain. Hani al-Sibai was the leader of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad group and had links with al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. Egypt also sentenced Sibai to death in absentia in 1998 before he fled to Britain, where he obtained the right to asylum. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair described Sibai as a “major influence” on jihadists, and he is considered a mentor to British ISIS terrorist Mohammed Emwazi, known as Jihadi John.

A British court granted him asylum, rejecting government efforts to deport him. In addition to granting him asylum, UK taxpayers helped provide him with £50,000 of public aid.

The United Kingdom has a long history of providing sanctuary to Islamist extremists. For example, London is currently the home of Brotherhood Acting General Guide Ibrahim Munir. Another prominent Brotherhood figure granted asylum in Britain is Tunisian Islamist and Ennahda founder Rached Ghannouchi, who is now the speaker of the Tunisian Parliament. Britain hosts up to 35,000 Islamists according to 2017 estimates, many of whom are wanted in their countries of origin.

The Brotherhood’s founding texts call for the gradual moral cleansing of Islamic individuals and communities and their eventual political unification into the caliphate under Islamic law. Former UK Prime Minister David Cameron wrote in 2015 that parts of the Brotherhood had a very ambiguous relationship with violent extremism.

However, Britain continued to grant Brotherhood members refugee status according to guidelines from the British immigration authorities.

Moreover, Islamist extremist groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir are flourishing in Britain, calling for the group to rule by means of an Islamic caliphate and publishing topics such as “The Return of the Islamic World Order”. The group also has a branch in Chicago, and its founder, Mohammed Malkawi, told a conference in Jordan in 2013, “Let Britain, America and the whole West go to Hell, because the caliphate is coming, God willing.”The group is banned in a number of countries, including Egypt.

The British court’s decision to grant Sirri refugee status is the latest example showing that the UK has for decades been extremely tolerant of Islamist extremists.

“While we have made great progress in recent years, there is, frankly, a great deal of tolerance for extremism in our country,” said then-Prime Minister Theresa May after a terrorist attack on London Bridge in 2017 that killed seven people.

Flexible laws allowed convicted terrorists from all over the world to roam freely in the UK and receive government benefits. This kind of lenient policy led a French intelligence officer to call London “Londonistan” during the 1990s.

Mark Curtis, author of “Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam”, said during a 2018 interview with Open Democracy, “Britain’s policy was to cooperate with Islamic extremists as a matter of particular opportunism.”

“The British government does not work with these forces because it agrees with them, but because it is useful at specific moments. In this sense, the cooperation highlights British vulnerability to find other foot soldiers on the ground to impose policies,” Curtis added.

As an example of the British government’s recent links with extremist and terrorist groups, Curtis noted that UK support for Syrian rebel groups has long focused on the Free Syrian Army (FSA), which British officials have described as moderates; however, during the first three years of the war, the FSA was in fact an ally and collaborator with ISIS and Al-Nusra Front in Syria.

Sirri’s ability to live the rest of his life in Britain is just another example of the poor outcome made possible by such flawed policies.