Eritrean asylum seeker Abdoela Berhan, 35, has been jailed for six months after punching 20-year-old British woman Cleo Lake unconscious when she rejected his advances during a night out in Bournemouth in December 2024. CCTV footage shows Berhan approaching Cleo and her friends outside a nightclub. After she told him to leave and pushed him away when he entered her personal space, he punched her in the face and knocked her unconscious. He fled, leaving her bleeding in the street with a broken nose. Berhan, who was staying at the taxpayer-funded Britannia asylum hotel, claimed he acted in self-defense, but the judge rejected his account, saying Cleo was "entitled to reject" his advances. District Judge Orla Austin imposed the maximum six-month sentence available for the assault, describing it as an "exceptional case" involving serious violence against a young woman who had simply rejected his advances. Berhan had also recently been convicted of assaulting a Subway worker and criminal damage. Asked whether he would be deported after serving his sentence, the Home Office said: "Where a foreign national poses a threat to the UK, we will always seek to deport them."

An "asylum seeker" in the Netherlands choked a man unconscious, kicked him in the face, and then tried to sexually assault the woman with him. Hours later, he's threatening a 19-year-old with a knife and attempting to rape her before locals stopped him. He was apprehended because asylum centre staff recognised him from the CCTV footage released of his attacks.