Revealed: asylum seeker was stabbed 16 times in Home Office accommodation
Attack in 2023 followed alleged warnings about violent housemate, and is among cases where asylum seekers in ‘dispersal housing’ have come to harm
A man who stabbed his housemate 16 times in the Home Office accommodation where they were both awaiting asylum decisions had been the subject of repeated warnings to their housing provider, Serco, his victim has alleged.
In another incident, a Palestinian refugee from Gaza was picked up by police while wandering the A12 in Essex in a state of “psychosis” after the Home Office and another housing provider, Clearsprings Ready Homes, failed to act on warnings he needed help and had been left without medication.
They are among the alarming cases Hyphen has been made aware of in which people seeking asylum who have acute mental health problems have been placed by the Home Office in privately run “dispersal accommodation” without suitable packages of care, putting them and others around them at risk.
It comes as the Home Office has admitted, following a year-long transparency battle with Hyphen, that it did not carry out a promised investigation into the death of an Iranian asylum seeker, Mehrab Omrani, in a Clearsprings dispersal property in Colchester in 2024.
The findings have put Andy Burnham under renewed pressure to take action. Allies of the prime minister had already briefed ahead of his taking office this week that he was minded to rip up the asylum contracts — which have a break clause — and devolve responsibility for dispersal housing to councils. The position reportedly puts him at odds with Shabana Mahmood, who is staying on as home secretary in the new government.
Karen Bradley, chair of the home affairs select committee, told Hyphen this week: “We want to be able to see that safeguarding improvements are being delivered, and providers held to account when they fail to do so. Without clear and transparent oversight, mistakes risk being repeated with tragic consequences.”
Multiple stab wounds
“I’m going to die.”
Alieu Barry says these words in horrific footage seen by Hyphen that shows him slumped against a wall, his neck and torso gushing with blood. Passersby can be seen trying to compress the worst of his stab wounds and call for help. Hyphen has chosen not to publish the video as it is too graphic.
Barry, 28, was ambushed by Muxsin Awjama on 7 May 2023 as he prepared to leave his shared dispersal housing in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, to pray at a nearby mosque.
“The guy stabbed him in the chest, in the stomach, everywhere,” said Godefroid Seminega, chief executive of Asha, a charity supporting refugees and asylum seekers in North Staffordshire. “The blood was running like a broken pipe.”
Hospital records show Barry suffered multiple stab wounds to the heart. He has been left with permanent injuries.
In the preceding months, Barry claims he and other housemates had voiced concerns about Awjama with Serco housing managers on multiple occasions, allegedly telling them Awjama could become violent and would even threaten to kill them if asked to clean up after himself.
Serco told Hyphen it did “not believe” Barry’s claim to have raised concerns because nothing was recorded on its system, though a spokesperson admitted the firm did not contact any of the housing managers in question to check.
After about a fortnight in hospital, Barry — a torture survivor from Sierra Leone — had to return to the same house, which he claims was still “sprayed” with blood.
“My blood, everywhere in the house,” said Barry. “I complain to Serco, they don’t listen to me. I’m crying every day.”
He claims it took another fortnight for Serco to clean the room and a further six weeks for him to be moved. Hyphen has seen a letter from Serco confirming that Barry was still living at the address two months after the stabbing.
A Serco spokesperson said: “This individual has provided no evidence to substantiate his claims and we do not believe them to be true. We have robust systems in place to record any concerns raised and there is no evidence of any issues being brought to our attention at the time.”
Clearspring, Mears and Serco hold 10-year Home Office contracts until 2029 to manage asylum accommodation. These require them to visit each property at least monthly, “proactively monitor the service users within their care” to identify those who “may have specific needs or be at risk” and tell the Home Office. They must also refer such cases to relevant agencies such as the local authority for a care and support assessment.
Awjama was charged with Barry’s attempted murder but killed himself while awaiting trial at HMP Nottingham on 5 October 2023. He left notes indicating he was “worried he was seriously mentally ill and should not continue living”, a report by the prisons ombudsman stated.
Of the wider system, Seminega said: “Sometimes they put together people who are suffering very severe mental health problems with those who are not suffering… and that’s very risky.”
MPs on the home affairs select committee in October said they had heard “extensive evidence describing inadequacies and inconsistencies in the safeguarding of vulnerable people within asylum accommodation, including slow responses to serious safeguarding issues”.
‘Would have starved’
In March 2026, police found a Palestinian refugee walking down one of the busiest roads in the south-east in a state of “psychosis”, unaware what day or year it was.
The episode could easily have ended in tragedy had the man, who had been living in dispersal housing, not been found.
The man had been prescribed antipsychotic medication for schizophrenia “while in detention” nine months earlier, in June 2025, Home Office correspondence shows. However, the Home Office’s position is that it was first made aware of the man’s mental health issues in July 2025 — and deemed these disclosures to not be supported by medical evidence at the time.
A psychological assessment of the man by a local mental health trust in December 2025 noted that he had fled Gaza following the outbreak of war in 2023, had been unable to access medication that he needed, and that he “often absconds for periods, struggles with the use of public transport and requires a high level of support in daily living tasks”. It is unclear if this was shared with the Home Office at the time but Hyphen has established it was sent to both Clearsprings and the Home Office on 2 March.
The Home Office is supposed to share relevant information about asylum seekers with specific needs or who are at risk, such as those with mental health issues, with providers — and notify them of any specific accommodation or support requirements.
But there appears to have been no transfer of care when he was moved to Colchester, even though he was unable to feed or wash himself, register with a GP or obtain antipsychotic medication. “If it wasn’t for his housemates buying and preparing him food out of their own minimal budgets, he would have starved long ago,” said Wilby.
Rama only became aware of his case in March 2026, more than two months after he arrived in the Essex city and just days before he went missing. The group repeatedly flagged the case to the Home Office, Clearsprings and local healthcare services but no help came and, a week later, he was picked up on the A12, a busy dual carriageway with no pavement that was once ranked the most dangerous road in Essex.
Clearsprings deferred questions about his case to the Home Office, which said it expects the “highest standards” from providers and that safety concerns are “investigated thoroughly”.
‘Didn’t even bother investigating’
Hyphen has discovered that 125 asylum seekers died while living in Home Office accommodation, or when it was their last known address, between 1 January 2024 and 23 October 2025.
These include 10 confirmed or suspected suicides, two deaths after collisions involving a train and a car, one due to “self-inflicted injuries” and two murders, data obtained through freedom of information (FoI) law shows.
Among them was Omrani, who may have lain dead in a dispersal home for up to four months despite wearing an electronic tag that should have alerted authorities, as we revealed last year.
His body was so decomposed that a coroner ruled it was impossible to tell how he had died.
A Home Office spokesperson told Hyphen in February 2025 it would conduct an internal investigation into Omrani’s death to “understand the full details of this case and ensure appropriate lessons are learnt”.
Hyphen fought for months to obtain the resultant report, which the Home Office insisted was being withheld as it contained personal information — only to finally admit in April, after an intervention from the Information Commissioner’s Office, that the document did not actually exist as no investigation had taken place. Mentions of such an investigation were “included in error” in statements given to Hyphen, it said.
Maria Wilby, director of Refugee, Asylum Seeker & Migrant Action (Rama), a support organisation, said: “That’s damning in itself. They didn’t even bother investigating what happened to him.”
Omrani had recently been released from prison for “criminal damage, threatening behaviour and exposure”, according to correspondence obtained by Hyphen after a separate FoI battle — raising further questions about the lack of monitoring of his ankle tag.
A tranche of emails between the Home Office and Clearsprings shows the office of then prime minister Rishi Sunak requested details of Omrani’s case, including whether he had been living in dispersal accommodation, the day after he was found. At the time, the government was preparing to ramp up the use of this type of accommodation for asylum seekers, amid a stand-off over legislation to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda.
“He was a foreign national offender and tagged,” a Colchester council source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Hyphen.
“One could question why lack of movement wasn’t picked up via his tag or lack of reporting, how a duty of care is discharged given his mental health issues, and whether learning is taken and applied.”
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