Migrant jailed for attacking cleaner at Epping asylum hotel
A migrant who arrived in the UK by small boat before attacking a member of staff at an asylum hotel has been jailed for 16 weeks.
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Mohammed Sharwarq, 32, was sentenced on Tuesday after attacking a cleaner at the Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex, the centre of mass anti-migration protests, sparked when a different asylum seeker sexually assaulted a teenage girl.
According to Sharwarq’s barrister, he was suffering a mental breakdown at the time of the attack and is eager to return to Syria.
He was also accused of sexual assault, but those charges were dropped at the start of the hearing.
Terence Newman, prosecuting, told the court Sharwarq knocked another asylum seeker to the floor before striking the cleaner in the arm.
"The defendant then approaches the head chef; he grabs him and tries to punch him to the face," said Mr Newman.
Sharwarq was on bail after a separate alleged attack at a different asylum hotel in Gloucestershire, District Judge Lynette Woodrow said.
Paul Baker, mitigating, pinned the assaults on a “mental breakdown” he was experiencing because of trauma he faced while fleeing the war in Syria in 2011.
"There were a lot of deaths and atrocities committed in this time," Mr Baker said.
Epping became the centre of anti-migrant protests across the UK after a different asylum seeker sexually assaulted a teenager.
Ethiopian national Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu, who arrived in the UK on a small boat days before the incidents, was found guilty of five offences after a trial at Chelmsford and Colchester magistrates' courts earlier this month..
The Home Office will seek to deport Kebatu after he was jailed for 12 months for sexual assaults on a woman and a 14-year-old girl that led to nationwide protests.