Why is an ISIS leader’s family living in the UK at taxpayers’ expense?

In a revelation that should shock but not surprise, the family of Abdul Qadir Mumin – the orange-bearded Somali now leading ISIS-Somalia – has been living in a council flat in Slough, courtesy of British taxpayers. Mumin, who fled the UK in 2010 after being monitored by MI5 for jihadist preaching in London mosques, left to wage holy war from a Somali cave. And here his British wife and three children are, on social housing, while he plots the caliphate’s comeback.

Mumin’s family are British, and deserve to be treated the same as other British citizens, regardless of Mumin’s crimes. Yet the case of Mumin follows a strong tradition of the British state acting as a safe haven for terrorists and their kin. Take Abu Hamza al-Masri, the hook-handed hate preacher known for his vitriolic preachings at the Finsbury Park Mosque. He was extradited from the UK to the US in 2012 and is now serving a life sentence for terrorism charges. These were based on his participation in hostage-taking in Yemen, support for the establishment of a terrorist-training camp in America, and the facilitation of violent jihad in Afghanistan. His family? They’ve lounged in a west London council house for years, reportedly pocketing thousands monthly in benefits.

In fact, when it was discovered that his wife was still living in the five-bedroom Shepherd’s Bush council flat with only two of her eight children, Hammersmith and Fulham Council asked her ‘to consider downsizing’ to make room for one of the families on their 10,000-strong wait list. She refused.

Then there’s Hani al-Sibai, an al-Qaeda preacher and recruiter who fled from Egypt to the UK in 1994, after he was convicted in absentia for plotting terrorist attacks. He is suspected to have radicalised British ISIS terrorist Mohammed Emwazi, better known as ‘Jihadi John’.

In 2005, the US Treasury accused al-Sibai of ‘training and providing material support to al-Qaeda, as well as conspiring to commit terrorist acts’. The European Commission’s sanctions committee made similar allegations about al-Sibai. He is reported to live lavishly in a £1million house in west London and, as of 2015, was receiving at least £50,000 a year in benefits. He has also been the beneficiary of roughly £123,000 in legal aid funded by the British taxpayer to fight deportation.

Yassir al-Sirri, another Egyptian fugitive convicted of terrorism in his home country, has lived in London since the 1990s. In this time, he penned a foreword to a book urging violence against Jews, posted statements advocating for ‘the use of violent jihad as an obligation for Muslims’ and kept explosives manuals at his home. In 2021, al-Sirri was granted the right to remain in the UK by an immigration tribunal, despite the attempts of the British government to have him deported.

And don’t forget Muhammad Qassem Sawalha, a former Hamas military commander, who slipped into Britain in the 1990s using a relative’s passport and was later granted citizenship. According to his 2004 indictment by the United States, Sawalha continued to work for Hamas after arriving in the UK, holding secret talks about ‘revitalising’ terrorist acts in Israel, and helping to launder money to Gaza and the West Bank. He has been photographed multiple times with Ismal Haniyeh, the former leader of Hamas who was assassinated by Israel last year. As recently as 2019, Sawalha took part in an official Hamas delegation to Moscow. In 2021, he and his wife bought their north London council house using the right-to-buy scheme, reportedly receiving a discount of more than £112,000 of public money.

It is irritating to have the family of a convicted terrorist living off the government crust. It is beyond the pale for alleged terrorists to be doing the same thing. The British state’s generosity to those who hate us is the very definition of suicidal empathy.

Emma Schubart is the Data and Insights Manager at the Adam Smith Institute.