<\/p>\n
BELFAST, Northern Ireland (AP) – A 30-year-old man from Sudan appeared in a Belfast court Wednesday charged with attempted murder over a stabbing attack that left a man seriously injured and triggered anti-immigrant violence in several parts of Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n
Hadi Alodid, 30, was ordered held in jail after an appearance by video in Belfast Magistrates\u2019 Court, where a detective said he blinded Stephen Ogilvie in the left eye during the knife attack. He was also charged with possessing a knife and threatening to kill a radiographer while being treated for a hand injury after the assault.<\/p>\n
When police arrived at the crime scene, they found Alodid on the man, armed with a kitchen knife, the detective said. Alodid later told hospital staff: \u201cI\u2019ve killed someone, I don\u2019t know if they are dead,\u201d and said, \u201cI will kill you.”<\/p>\n
He refused legal representation through an Arabic interpreter and did not enter a plea.<\/p>\n
The court appearance followed a night of violence in which masked men set fire to several homes they believed to house immigrants, burned trash bins, torched a Belfast bus and pelted police with objects. Firefighters rescued several people from burning homes.<\/p>\n
PHOTO: People watch as firemen arrive to put out a vehicle fire from a protest in East Belfast following a stabbing incident in Belfast, June 9, 2026. (AP Photo\/Peter Morrison)<\/em><\/p>\n Anselme Shima, a Belfast resident originally from Congo, said he saw smoke from burning vehicles near his home.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve lived on my street for almost 10 years, I have a good relationship with my neighbors, but last night was a horrific one,\u201d he said. \u201cWe don\u2019t know what to do. I\u2019m scared. Seeing this, I\u2019m wondering if I\u2019m next.\u201d<\/p>\n Families, one with a baby, were rescued and taken to police stations for safety, Chief Constable Jon Boutcher told the BBC.<\/p>\n \u201cThese weren\u2019t just families from ethnic minority communities, these were families from across communities that were caught up in this vile behavior last night,” Boutcher said. \u201cThere is absolutely no excuse for it.\u201d<\/p>\n Politicians from both parts of Northern Ireland\u2019s power-sharing government condemned the violence. First Minister Michelle O\u2019Neill of Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein said it was \u201cthuggery.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGroups of masked men burning families out of their homes is nothing less than disgusting cowardice,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly, of the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party, said that \u201ctaking frustration at the evil actions of a person out on those who had no part in it is utterly wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n Monday\u2019s attack, caught in video footage that quickly spread on social media, was seized on by anti-immigration activists. Ogilvie, a man in his 40s, was hospitalized with deep cuts to his head, face and back.<\/p>\n Police said Alodid entered Northern Ireland from the neighboring Republic of Ireland in 2023, applied for asylum and was given a 5-year permit to remain.<\/p>\n The Police Service of Northern Ireland said there is no information to suggest the attack was terrorism-related and they were not seeking other suspects.<\/p>\n Northern Ireland Justice Minister Naomi Long said social media agitators who \u201cyesterday would have struggled to find Belfast on a map\u201d were \u201cweaponizing\u201d the fears of local people.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019re driving people from their homes based on nothing but the color of their skin, you can\u2019t dress that up any other way, it\u2019s racism, and those bad faith actors need to take a step back,\u201d she told the BBC.<\/p>\n Some politicians said the stabbing should spark a review of the open border between Northern Ireland, which is part of the U.K., and the Republic of Ireland.<\/p>\n The border is a highly sensitive issue. Allowing the free flow of people is a major pillar of the peace process that largely ended decades of violence known as \u201cThe Troubles.\u201d The conflict involving Irish Republican and British Loyalist militants and U.K. security forces left almost 3,600 people dead before a 1998 peace accord.<\/p>\n Much of Tuesday\u2019s violence took place in working-class areas where former paramilitary groups still hold considerable sway over the streets.<\/p>\n Last week a separate case of a university student who was stabbed to death in Southampton, England, in December was seized on by activists and U.S. Vice President JD Vance, who blamed immigration for the violence. Some British politicians objected to that.<\/p>\n Henry Nowak, who was white, was killed by Vickrum Digwa, a Sikh who falsely claimed to police that he was the victim of a racist assault by Nowak. When police officers arrived, they initially treated the wounded Nowak as a suspect before noticing his injury and trying to resuscitate him.<\/p>\n Digwa was convicted of murder for stabbing Nowak with a Sikh dagger and sentenced last week to life in prison with a minimum 21-year term. The case has spurred heated debates about policing and race, and a protest over Nowak\u2019s death turned violent, with some attacking police with chairs and rocks. Several people were charged with violent disorder.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" BELFAST, Northern Ireland (AP) – A 30-year-old man from Sudan appeared in a Belfast court Wednesday charged with attempted murder over a stabbing attack that left a man seriously injured and triggered anti-immigrant violence in several parts of Northern Ireland. Hadi Alodid, 30, was ordered held in jail after an appearance by video in Belfast<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29524,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[9781,9767,4460,9780,343,5355,1565,7717,3925],"class_list":["post-29523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jesus","tag-antiimmigrant","tag-brutal","tag-cars","tag-irish","tag-protests","tag-rioters","tag-sparks","tag-stabbing","tag-torch"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29523\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}