The video of a man being held down and stabbed in north Belfast before bystanders intervened with a hurling stick has ignited violent anti-immigration protests that saw migrant homes burned out in east Belfast. Hadi Alodid, 30, a former policeman in Khartoum from a prominent north Sudanese family, appeared in court on Wednesday charged with the attempted murder of 44-year-old Stephen Ogilvie, who lost an eye and suffered injuries to his back and head in the attack.
Alodid was born and partly raised in Saudi Arabia, returning to Sudan for his education. A friend, Azheri Omer, said Alodid joined the police in Khartoum but stayed only a few months. The pair decided to head to Europe via Libya, a busy migrant-smuggling route. Alodid had enough money to cross the Mediterranean, reach Paris and then the UK. Omer remained stranded in Libya because he had no funds. Jon Boutcher, chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), said Alodid travelled from Sudan to Paris, then to Dublin, before taking a bus to Belfast in February 2023. There, he claimed asylum and was granted leave to remain in September that year. Two brothers followed: one lives in Liverpool, another was thought to be living with Alodid in Belfast.
“Belfast knife attack suspect Hadi Alodid, a former Sudanese policeman, charged after video sparked violent anti-migrant protests that burned out homes.”
In east Belfast, a good portion of a narrow terraced street housing non-European migrants was burned out. The migrants were escorted away in armoured PSNI Land Rovers, leaving blackened shells of houses and cars. A fireman told an elderly couple sheltering in a bus stop: “It won’t be for a few hours yet, I’m sorry,” warning that exposed gas mains made the street unsafe. Hostility to journalists was rampant. One local warned a reporter: “In this country? Are you fucking daft? Fuck away off and get on home before you get kneecapped.” Protesters had been advised to dress in all-dark clothes and mask up, targeting individual migrant homes rather than police. The attack had occurred in a firmly Catholic, Nationalist area, and the symbolism of the attacker being beaten off with a hurling stick – a symbol of Irish cultural nationalism – by a local man named Maitiu Mág Tighearnán was quickly noted. The protests pose a new challenge in Northern Ireland, where old hatreds have given way to new grievances, as the city absorbs the shock of an atrocity captured on video.