Somali asylum seeker family given £2m house... after complaining 5-bed London home was 'in poor area'

A family of former asylum-seekers from Somalia are living in a £2.1million luxury townhouse in one of Britain's most exclusive addresses at a cost to taxpayers of £8,000 a month.

Abdi and Sayruq Nur and their seven children moved into their three-storey property in a fashionable area of London last month because they didn't like the 'poorer' part of the city they were living in.

Mr Nur, 42, an unemployed bus conductor, and his 40-year-old wife, who has never worked, are now living in Kensington despite the fact that they are totally dependent on state benefits.

Mr Nur said his former five-bedroom home in the Kensal Rise area of Brent, which cost £900 a week in housing benefit, was suitable for the family's needs but he said they had felt compelled to move because they did not like living 'in a very poor area' and were unhappy with the quality of local shops and schools.

The family's three-storey property, which dates from the 1840s, has five bedrooms, two bathrooms, a fully fitted kitchen and a garden.

The family's living room, which boasts a large bay window, is dominated by a 50in LG flatscreen TV. It also has two large black leather sofas, two elaborate rugs and lush houseplants.

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When is this going to stop? We have British people here who have been on council lists for years and are unable to rent privately owned properties.

EU awards UK benefits to Somali whose children attend school in Britain

A Somali mother-of-four is entitled to claim thousands of pounds in benefits because two of her children are attending UK schools, EU judges ruled today.

Nimco Hassan Ibrahim was denied housing assistance because she and her estranged husband - a Danish national - failed to qualify for residency rights.

She appealed the decision by Harrow Council in north-west London, claiming that as her children's 'primary carer' she should be allowed to stay on in Britain and qualify for state handouts.

Today the European Court of Justice directed the Britain's Appeal Court to find in her favour.

It said that parents of children in school have the right of residence even where they cannot support themselves.

The ruling paves the way for Ms Ibrahim to claim thousands of pounds in benefits each month.

EU rules say that members of the family of a migrant worker who is a national of one EU country and employed in another have residency rights with that worker, whatever their nationality - a right that continues even if the migrant worker no longer lives or works there.

The same judges also backed the case of Portuguese Maria Teixeira, divorced from her Portuguese husband, who was turned down for housing assistance on the grounds that she had no right of UK residence because she was not working and was not therefore self-sufficient.

She argued that she had residency rights because her daughter - the child of an EU national who had moved from one EU country to another - was continuing education in the UK.

The EU judges said the right of residence of the 'primary carer' parent normally ends when the child reaches 18, 'unless the child continues to need the presence and care of that parent in order to be able to pursue and complete his or her education'.

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1 IN 5 KILLERS IS FOREIGN

Immigrants are twice as likely to commit or be charged with an illegal killing.

Up to a fifth of killers in England and Wales are foreign, police figures suggest. Out of 371 individuals accused or convicted of murder or manslaughter last year, 79 were from abroad - more than 21 per cent.

Foreign immigrants make up only around a tenth of the UK population, meaning they are statistically twice as likely as native Britons to be charged with or found guilty of an illegal killing.

In London, almost 40 per cent of those in such cases in the past year were from overseas, or of unknown origin.

Opposition critics said the findings reflected the Government's failure to deport foreign criminals, and the ease with which offenders from abroad can slip through border controls.

The most common nationality for foreigners involved in murder and manslaughter cases was Polish, followed by Nepalese, Lithuanian, Somalian and Sri Lankan.

Around half the police forces across England and Wales provided data under the Freedom of Information Act, revealing strong regional differences.

The highest figures were in London where in the year to April 2009, 93 of the 233 people accused or convicted of murder and manslaughter were either non-British or from unknown backgrounds.

In West Mercia, five out of 22 were foreigners - 23 per cent - from Lithuania, Poland, and the Republic of Ireland. Nottinghamshire showed the same proportion, with three out of 13 cases.

But some forces - including Cheshire, Humberside, Hampshire, and Merseyside - recorded no cases with foreign killers. The figures may be an underestimate as 11 out 30 forces which responded claimed they did not record nationalities of either killers or murder victims, and others had gaps in the information.

As foreign suspects are typically harder to identify and trace, meaning that crimes are less likely to be solved, the real proportion could be significantly higher.

The figures showed foreigners were also more likely to be victims of murder or manslaughter, accounting for 20 per cent of all those killed in England and Wales in 2007-8, and 13 per cent last year.

Concerns about convicted offenders entering Britain were underlined in April by the case of Marek Harcar, 33, who was sentenced to a minimum 25 years in jail for the abduction, rape and murder of businesswoman Moira Jones.

Slovakian Harcar was allowed into Britain despite having 13 convictions, four of them involving violence. He abducted the 40-year-old just yards from her home on May 28 last year. Her semi-naked body was found in Queen's Park in Glasgow the next day.

Shadow home secretary Chris Grayling said: 'The Government seem to have completely failed to get to grips with foreign nationals' crime in the UK.

'These figures underline the scale of the problem, but we know the Government are simply failing to deport offenders in the way they should be.'

Earlier this year Detective Chief Inspector Murray Duffin, of the Scotland Yard Extradition and Intelligence Unit, warned: 'Britain is becoming a magnet for increasing numbers of criminals from the former Eastern bloc countries which are now members of the EU.'
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