Your enemy’s enemy isn’t always your friend when it comes to refugees

For those who argue that Britain should blindly accept refugees, the family history of Salman Abedi must make somewhat uncomfortable reading. Salman was born in Britain in 1994 to a couple who had newly arrived as refugees from Libya. At the time, such people were welcomed with open arms because they were opponents of President Gaddafi, whose embassy staff had killed PC Yvonne Fletcher in London in 1984, who was suspected of commissioning the Lockerbie bomb and who was generally considered to be one of the world’s most evil dictators. On the principle of “my enemy’s enemy is my friend”, rather little seems to have been asked of Gaddafi’s opponents.

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Druin Burch

Lucy Letby and the killer nurse I worked with

In reality, as we have discovered with Isis in Syria, that is not a very good principle on which to run an asylum system. Sometimes your enemy’s enemy can turn be an even greater foe.