Updated ,first published
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London: Hundreds of protesters have set fire to homes and vehicles in Belfast during a night of violent anti-immigrant riots after police charged a Sudanese asylum seeker with attempted murder over a brutal stabbing attack likened to an attempted beheading.
Police said late on Tuesday in Belfast (shortly before 4am on Wednesday AEST) that they had charged the alleged assailant with attempted murder, possession of a bladed article in a public place and threatening to kill.
New details emerged about the suspect, Hadi Alodid, 30, when he faced Belfast Magistrates Court on Wednesday morning (about 8pm AEST) and was refused bail.
The victim of the brutal stabbing, Stephen Ogilvie, 44, lost his left eye and suffered severe damage to the right eye as well as cuts to his face and back, the court heard.
The court heard Alodid had allegedly threatened to kill a National Health Service radiographer before the stabbing attack on Monday night.
He is due to appear in court again on July 8. Northern Ireland police initially described the suspect as Somali, but later said he was Sudanese.
Homes were torched and a bus was set ablaze in response to the incident, as protesters clad in black, many with their faces covered, defied police and political leaders with an eruption of anger against migrants.
The riots came one night after a graphic online video showed an assailant kneeling over a victim on a Belfast street and yelling while brandishing a knife above his head, moments before onlookers rushed to help by wielding makeshift weapons against the attacker.
One church leader said migrants in his community were targeted in their homes when rioters set fire to houses in north Belfast.
“They’re good Christian people and they’re getting put out just because they’re black,” pastor Jack McKee told the BBC.
Outrage spread online throughout Tuesday after the graphic video showed the attack on the Belfast street on Monday night, leading conservative political leaders to call on the police to reveal the ethnicity of the suspect and the details of the injuries to the victim.
The BBC reported that a crowd of 100 men kicked in doors and broke windows of homes on a street in East Belfast. Sky News showed footage of a house on fire. London’s Telegraph reported that at least three houses and a Middle Eastern supermarket had been set ablaze in the north-west of the city.
The political uproar came after a public debate about “two-tier policing” in the death of a young white man, Henry Nowak, at the hands of a Sikh assailant in Southampton last December, with footage showing the police had initially treated the victim as a suspect.
Hours after the Belfast attack, populist political leader Nigel Farage called on police to name the attacker.
“What happened in Belfast last night is horrific,” said Farage, the head of the Reform UK party.
“The authorities must reveal the identity and status of the attacker immediately. The public are entitled to the truth.”
A rival right-wing politician, Rupert Lowe, said he had watched the footage of the attack and wanted the police to guarantee “full transparency”, including the immigration status of the suspect.
Lowe, an MP who left Reform to lead his own party, Restore, linked the Belfast attack to the Southampton case and said the solution was to deport migrants and bring back the death penalty.
“I have had enough. The British people have had enough,” Lowe said on X.
“We do not have to live like this – there is another way. Death penalty, mass deportations, end mass immigration.”
The remarks escalated the political row over the attack as mainstream media outlets covered the case and people shared the graphic video on social media.
A British far-right activist known as Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, issued a public call for protests across the country to stop migration. While some people gathered at the locations he listed, including Parliament Square in London, the violence was centred on Belfast.
Robinson issued the call soon after posting a photo of himself in Moscow with the father of billionaire Elon Musk, who has backed Robinson in the past. Musk, in turn, endorsed the calls for public rallies.
“Only by protesting REPEATEDLY and LOUDLY will there be any change!!” the billionaire tweeted.
While some activists warned of rising crime rates, a briefing on crime rates by the House of Commons Library found that there were 53,000 offences involving knives and similar sharp instruments in England and Wales in the year to March 2025. It said this was down by 1.2 per cent on the previous year.
The latest figures from the Police Service for Northern Ireland found there were 533 cases of violent crime involving knives and sharp instruments in the year to March, compared to 530 the previous year. The case numbers have fallen from 668 in 2022, 632 in 2023 and 608 in 2024.
Hours before the riots, leaders from the major political parties in Northern Ireland held a joint press conference to call for calm.
First Minister Michelle O’Neill, from Sinn Fein, urged people to reject the calls for public protests or hatred against migrants.
“I don’t want to see any person living in fear, and we need to say no racism, no to hatred, no to sectarianism that is out there in our society,” she said.
Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly, from the Democratic Unionist Party, acknowledged that many people wanted changes to the migration rules.
“People legitimately need to be reassured that their concerns are not only being listened to but taken seriously,” she said.
But their pleas did not stop hundreds of protesters gathering in Belfast and other cities.
Police Service of Northern Ireland chief constable Jon Boutcher emphasised that the suspect was in custody and that public protests could escalate to disorder and lead to arrests.
“Do not give the man in the video any more infamy,” he said of the suspect.
The police said the suspect arrived in Belfast in February 2023 after travelling by bus from Dublin. He had flown to Ireland from Paris after travelling from Sudan, and then took advantage of the so-called “Irish route” to Britain across the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, without routine immigration checks.
He claimed asylum in Belfast and was given leave to remain in the UK from September 2023 for a period of five years.
The UK Home Office confirmed this in a statement, saying the suspect was granted refugee status in 2023.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he had no tolerance for the “abhorrent” scenes in Belfast.
“The horrific attack in Belfast last night is sickening,” he said.
Conservative Party MP and shadow home secretary Chris Philp said the case could be further evidence that the government’s lack of border control was endangering the public.
But the suspect was granted leave to remain when the Conservatives were in power in 2023, and the ministers in authority at the time have since left the Conservatives to join Farage at Reform.
Lowe blamed the immigration minister at the time, Robert Jenrick, and the home secretary at the time, Suella Braverman. Both defected to Reform in January.
Police Service of Northern Ireland Assistant Chief Constable Ryan Henderson described the attack as “brutal” and said police were seeking to determine the motive.
“I want to reassure the local community that we are treating this attack with the utmost seriousness,” he said.
Hundreds of people rioted in Southampton in England on June 2 after the release of video evidence in the Nowak case showing police initially dismissed the young man’s statement that he had been stabbed and handcuffed him as a suspect.
Police initially told Nowak, 18, he would be arrested for assault. He died of his wounds soon after the stabbing on December 3 last year.
His killer, Vickrum Digwa, 23, was convicted of murder using a 21-centimetre blade he carried as part of his Sikh faith. He was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 21 years.
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David Crowe is Europe correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via X or email.
