The murder in Derby: another victim of borderless Britain

This was a ‘brutal and callous act’, said Judge Shaun Smith on Wednesday, after sentencing Haybe Cabdiraxmaan Nur to life in prison for the murder of Gurvinder Singh Johal. Smith was not overstating it.

Nur, a Somali national who arrived in the UK illegally in October 2024 by small boat, had his asylum application rejected in January this year. Five months later, on 6 May, he walked into a branch of Lloyds bank in Derby, in the East Midlands. Johal, a complete stranger to Nur, happened to be waiting in a queue inside the bank. Nur pulled a knife from his trousers and forcefully stabbed Johal in the chest.

Nur was in and out of the bank in just 22 seconds. And just like that he had devastated the lives of Johal’s wife, his two children and his wider family and friends. The CCTV footage of the murder, replayed in court, drove several distressed family members from the room in tears. ‘Our lives didn’t just change’, read their impact statement. ‘They shattered… We are tormented by “what ifs.”’

This is in danger of becoming an all too familiar story. Indeed, Nur was sentenced not two days after a triple stabbing in Uxbridge. Wayne Broadhurst, a 49-year-old refuse-collector, was stabbed to death while walking his dog around the block. A 45-year-old man was left with life-changing injuries, while a 14-year-old boy was also attacked.

Like Nur, Broadhurst’s alleged murderer had also entered the UK illegally. An Afghan national, he had arrived on the back of a lorry in 2020 before being granted leave to remain in 2022.

Families across the country are being forced to pay the price for a spineless government only too happy to play Russian Roulette with the public. Most asylum seekers do not threaten the safety and security of British citizens. But there are clearly far too many who do, and no serious attempt is being made to identify them and deport them.

It’s not even as if those who do pose a threat do so unexpectedly. Nur had police records in the four different European countries he’d landed in before reaching the UK. On the morning of the murder he reportedly guzzled three bottles of vodka and a box of beer, before calling a migrant charity helpline to say he was ‘going to kill 500 people… doctors, police or people working at the Home Office’. His police records and behaviour were huge red flags, and yet thanks to our chaotic asylum system, he was free to wander our streets.

It is disturbing how accustomed we Brits have become to this senseless violence. It’s as if a strange fatigue has settled over us – a bleak acceptance that this is ‘just the way life is’ now.

We cannot go on like this. We cannot keep treating cases such as Johal’s or Broadhurst’s as tragic anomalies. The horror is not only that these incidents happen – it is also that we are in danger of no longer being horrified.

Georgina Mumford is an editorial assistant at spiked.