Abdul Ezedi is dead and gone. The Clapham acid attacker was laid to rest in a Muslim burial at a cemetery in east London after a funeral at a mosque in the west of the capital. This is what his family and friends wanted for him. Given that we know he was a loyal customer of his local halal butchers in Newcastle right up until the end, we must presume it is what he would have wanted for himself too.

Head-in-the-clouds vicars are a longstanding stereotype. But judges are supposed to be different

Even the liberal dolts of our establishment – church leaders, immigration judges and the like – appear to have come round to the view that he was never really a Christian.

The woman and her two young daughters so hideously assaulted by Ezedi all survived but will carry the physical and psychological scars of his attack for the rest of their lives. The female complainant he was convicted in 2018 of exposing himself to and sexually assaulting may also be struggling to come to terms with her experiences – especially after finding out that his final and successful asylum appeal ruling discounted those crimes.

Meanwhile, the government of Ezedi’s home country of Afghanistan has announced it will shortly resume the longstanding practice of stoning to death women convicted of adultery. Back in dear old Blighty, we are now into the territory of ‘lessons to be learned’: Never give any weight to testimonials provided by a Christian minister about a Muslim asylum seeker professing to have found Jesus will hopefully be one of them.

Reverend Roy Merrin, former ministry team leader at a baptist church in Jarrow, South Tyneside, is cast as the dangerously naïve Nazarene in the Ezedi case, having submitted a letter declaring:

‘Abdul has been ready to share his faith in Christ with non-Christians…I would support his application to remain in this country’.

A couple of years ago, it was Church of England clergy in Liverpool who belatedly realised they had been similarly gulled by the Islamist bomber Emad al-Swealmeen. And since these two cases came to light, it has become clear that there is a racket going on of fake conversions, fuelled by asylum seekers trying to bolster their cases against deportation and hapless clergy thrilled to see someone new joining their dwindling congregations.

Head-in-the-clouds vicars are a longstanding national stereotype. But judges are supposed to be different – stern, unbending dispensers of sanctions and immune from having the wool pulled over their eyes.

None of that seems to apply to immigration judge William O’Hanlon, who appears to have ignored Ezedi’s sex crimes, discounted his multiple documented lies about his background and even the fact that he had failed the Home Office’s standard Christianity test. He went instead with the ‘most compelling evidence’ of Rev Merrin.

So how many more Ezedis are we harbouring in Britain right now – men steeped in misogyny who pose an ongoing danger to women and children? There are grounds for thinking it may be a lot. Over at GB News, presenter Patrick Christys has submitted a freedom of information request to the Ministry of Justice asking, among other things, how many asylum-seekers are in prison or awaiting trial for sexual offences. The MoJ has confirmed it holds the information but says collating and releasing it would exceed the cost limit stipulated by the Freedom Of Information Act.

In Denmark, they are more transparent about crime statistics. A few years ago, official figures there showed men from a non-western background were three times more likely to commit sexual offences. Perhaps the UK has been luckier than Denmark with its cohort of asylum seekers. But if the Ezedi case is to serve as any kind of wake-up call then, as that old Fleet Street columnist John Junor used to put it back in the day: I think we should be told.