Baruch Gad

This is incredible. An Algerian Hamas supporter who became an illegal overstayer in Britain, lied to immigration officers about it, and went to prison for it, is now in a senior role at the BBC. Because the Tories and Labour failed to deport him. Hicham Yezza has a long record of supporting Islamist violence. He was arrested in 2008 for possessing an al-Qaeda terrorist training manual. He came to Britain on a visa that expired in 2003. He stayed anyway. When immigration officers caught up with him, he told them his passport with the visa stamp had been stolen. They found it in his flat. A jury convicted him of deception. He was jailed for nine months. Then he won his appeal against deportation, and was later handed British citizenship. Now he’s the Principal Data Scientist in the BBC’s “Responsible AI” division, helping to decide how AI shapes what BBC News tells you. Before that he worked at BBC Monitoring, briefing BBC journalists on the Middle East. Can you guess what kind of briefings he gave them? He should never have been allowed to stay. Under Reform, people like him never will be. Under Operation Restoring Justice, we will detain and deport anyone who broke into our country. Our borders will mean something again.