Belfast stabbing suspect was former Sudanese policeman as protests leave street in ashes

The narrow terraced street in East Belfast, home to non-European migrants, was still smouldering hours after the arson. Armoured Police Service of Northern Ireland Land Rovers had earlier escorted the residents away; now their houses and cars were blackened shells. An elderly couple, sheltering from the rain in a bus stop on the Protestant Newtownards Road, asked a passing fireman when they could go home. “It won’t be for a few hours yet, I’m sorry,” he warned, citing exposed gas mains. The violence was the climax of a day of protests triggered by a video that showed a man being stabbed and held down on the pavement in North Belfast. The victim, 44-year-old Stephen Ogilvie, lost an eye and suffered injuries to his back and head. The man charged with his attempted murder is Hadi Alodid, a 30-year-old Sudanese man who, friends have told The Telegraph, served as a policeman in Khartoum for a few months before the civil war that erupted in April 2023 prompted him to flee. Alodid, from a prominent family in the town of Karima, was born and partly raised in Saudi Arabia but returned to Sudan for his education. His friend Azheri Omer said the pair decided to head to Europe via Libya, a busy migrant-smuggling route. Alodid had enough money to cross the Mediterranean and reach Paris and then the UK. His brothers followed: one lives in Liverpool; another, according to sources, shared a home with Alodid in Belfast. The grounds of Alodid’s asylum claim remain unclear. Sudan’s civil war has forced 14 million people from their homes; about four million have left the country. The UN’s International Organisation for Migration reported a “notable growth” in Sudanese arrivals in Europe: 12,684 in the first 11 months of 2025, a 3.3-fold increase over the same period in 2024. The attack, which the UnHerd correspondent described as an “attempted beheading”, took place in a firmly Catholic, Nationalist area. The attacker was beaten off with a hurling stick — a symbol of Irish cultural nationalism — by a local man named Maitiu Mág Tighearnán. The video incited anti-immigration protests across Northern Ireland, with protesters dressing in all-dark clothes and masking up, instructed not to allow cameras. Journalists were met with hostility. One local warned a reporter: “Fuck away off and get on home before you get kneecapped.” Osman Mahmoud, a former Sudanese politician with the National Congress Party, said: “This case has been a very big deal in the Sudanese social media. Everyone is afraid to be involved with this case, and we have seen the reaction of the British people against the Sudanese.” Alodid appeared in court on Wednesday charged with attempted murder; family members are refusing to talk about the incident.