A transgender refugee who founded an LGBTQ organisation in east London has been accused of helping dozens of asylum seekers falsely claim to be gay in order to remain in Britain.
Sajjad Miah, 42, was granted asylum in 2013 after saying she faced persecution in Bangladesh because of her sexuality.
She arrived in the UK as a 26-year-old man but later transitioned to a woman. After receiving asylum, Ms Miah founded Apanjon, a charity based in east London.
This week, she was arrested on suspicion of fraud and immigration offences. Home Office officers raided her home and seized mobile phones, jewellery and thousands of pounds in cash.
Home Office sources allege that Apanjon charged straight men up to £4,500 to produce fabricated evidence suggesting they were gay.
The alleged material included photographs or letters intended to support claims of same-sex relationships. Such evidence could then be used to argue that applicants faced persecution because of their sexuality if they were returned to their home countries, most commonly Bangladesh.
The Home Office is reviewing more than 100 past and present asylum applications potentially linked to the organisation. The applicants sought protection under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) from persecution as homosexuals in their countries of origin.
Ms Miah is understood to have initially claimed asylum as a gay man before beginning her transition.
Sajjad Miah arrived in Britain as a man but later transitioned to a woman. In 2013, she was granted asylum on the grounds of sexuality after saying she would face persecution in Bangladesh.
After securing the right to remain in Britain, Ms Miah, 42, established the east London charity Apanjon, which she says was created to support asylum seekers with experiences similar to her own.
Ms Miah operates the organisation from this shabby east London office, which was raided this week. Police arrested her and two other people associated with Apanjon.
Immigration Enforcement officers wearing riot helmets and stab vests arrested her during early-morning raids at her London home.
She was detained alongside a second suspect believed to be connected to Apanjon, with both held on suspicion of fraud and immigration offences. A third person was arrested on suspicion of being unlawfully in the country.
Officers also searched Vine Court Businesses, a shabby business centre on a side street in Whitechapel that had served as Apanjon’s head office until this week.
Speaking exclusively to the Daily Mail after being released on bail, Ms Miah said: ‘They arrested me at my house in the morning and took me to the police station for questioning.’
However, she insisted that Apanjon is a legitimate organisation and claimed it was being unfairly targeted.
‘My life was in danger in Bangladesh because it is a very strict Islamic country. After coming to the UK, I was eventually given asylum and then I started my organisation to help other people in the same situation as me,’ she said.
‘We only give letters of support to LGBT people after observing them for six months and making sure they are not lying about their sexuality.’
‘We are a genuine organisation trying to help LGBT Bangladeshi people. There is no evidence for what they are accusing us of. We only support people who are genuinely LGBT. We have not provided false documentation, although they asked me whether I was taking money for this.’
‘During the interview, they questioned our credibility and said that even some immigration judges do not believe us. But we are being victimised. We are being treated unfairly, and all these allegations are incorrect.’
Asked about cash and valuables seized during the raid, she went on: ‘The money was for my rent, and the jewellery belonged to my sister.’
Ms Miah said that she had eventually been released without charge although warned that she may have to return for questioning.
She revealed that she has also received death threats after details of the raid were reported in the media – but that they had come from the Bangladeshi community rather than opponents of liberal immigration policies.
She said: ‘People have been threatening to kill me saying that I’m spreading un-Islamic behaviour and ruining their culture.
‘I’m too afraid to go home and am not even staying there now. I don’t know why the Home Office is saying all these wrong things about us.’
Ms Miah’s Apanjon community group claims to ‘campaign for equality and justice for LGBT community people in Bangladesh’.
It operates from the first floor of the ramshackle business centre made up of a number of independent firms including a courier company; a money exchange company; a recruitment firm and a solicitors.
Down a side street, it is directly behind the East London Mosque, one of the largest in the capital and in the centre of Britain’s largest Bangladeshi community, which is predominantly Muslim and does not accept LGBT relationships.
Ms Miah is understood to have begun her asylum claim as a gay man before beginning her transition to a woman. She is accused of helping straight asylum seekers to pretend to be gay
The organisation provides ‘evidence packages’, costing thousands of pounds, it is alleged, included fake documents and letters of support along with staged photographs, many taken at the same gay bars and clubs.
Often Bangladeshi men only claimed to be gay after initially being refused asylum on political grounds, the Home Office said.
Apanjon then would vouch for those men on the basis they were gay only after their application had been rejected, it is claimed.
In one case, a man did not raise his sexuality until nine years after his original asylum application.
It also emerged that immigration judges have previously criticised evidence from Apanjon as unreliable or not credible and found that an applicant who claimed to have attended the group’s events had submitted staged photographs.
Its website is littered with pictures of predominantly South Asian men dressed in matching brightly coloured pink, yellow or red shirts beaming at the camera at gay events like Pride.
In many there is a multi-coloured flag with the organisation’s name emblazoned across it and the words: ‘Working for human rights. A first Bangladeshi LGBT org.’
It also shows a picture of Ms Miah standing at a lectern with a Union Jack in the background, accompanied by the words: ‘Gay Rights. Human Rights.’
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It’s unclear whether these are among the photographs said to have been staged to create a false trail of gay behaviour.
The organisation claims to host ‘monthly meetings, social cultural events, and playful activities such as GAY nights’. It promises to help people with coming out as gay as well as health and fitness and organising social events.
And it advertises the offer of legal advice, stating: ‘We provide this service in order to protect an LGBT person from tortures, hate-crimes, physical & verbal abuse, discrimination, and other anti LGBT measures.
‘We regularly communicate with experienced solicitors and barristers in the UK in order for up-to-date information on legal matters to facilitate our members.’
At a rundown block in Whitechapel, the operation to arrest Ms Miah was reminiscent of the kind of tactics used to apprehend terrorists and organised crime figures.
‘It was madness,’ said a resident describing the moment around 12 officers stormed the graffiti-strewn block on Tuesday.
‘I heard them shouting, ‘Open the door now.’ Kids were getting ready to go to school when the raids kicked off.’
When the Mail visited Apanjon’s HQ earlier this week in an attempt to speak to somebody about its work, one young man standing nearby said: ‘You’re looking for Apanjon? Are you after immigration advice?
‘We see a lot of people going in and out of there, I know they have helped a lot of people stay in the UK. A lot of that is going on around here because there’s a lot of money to be made.’
And the dramatic scenes in Whitechapel will add weight to the perception that fabricating evidence about sexual orientation to remain in the country may be widespread.
Ejel Khan, founder of the Muslim LGBT Network, told the Daily Mail: ‘It’s a massive problem… A lot of people are doing it.’
He explained: ‘People have offered me money in the past to give them letters of recommendation even though they have admitted to me that they weren’t gay, so I refused. I would not entertain them.
‘I help and advocate for asylum seekers who are genuinely gay and fleeing persecution. It’s been my life’s work. The bogus claimants tarnish the work we do.’
Figures show that 2,133 asylum seekers claiming to be gay were allowed to stay in Britain in 2023 – the most recent year for which data is available where sexual orientation formed part of the basis for the application – up from 762 in 2022 and 677 in 2021. It’s four times the pre-Covid number.
In 2023, Pakistan accounted for the highest number of cases citing sexual orientation (578), followed by Bangladesh (175), where homosexual activity can result in life imprisonment, then Nigeria (103) and India (39).
Statistics on sexual orientation were not recorded in a reportable format prior to 2015.
By then, the Supreme Court had ended the Home Office’s previous policy of refusing asylum to gay refugees on the grounds they could avoid persecution abroad by pretending to be heterosexual.
Explaining the decision, Lord Rodger, one of the judges, said in extraordinary comments: ‘Just as male heterosexuals are free to enjoy themselves playing rugby, drinking beer and talking about girls with their mates, so male homosexuals are to be free to enjoy themselves going to Kylie concerts, drinking exotically coloured cocktails and talking about boys with their straight female mates.’
As the mystery over the precise focus of Apanjon’s work lingers, the issue of a person’s sexual orientation is increasingly being used in asylum applications.
Last week it emerged that a migrant jailed for two rapes on his wife and sister and deemed a risk to children had finally won the right to stay in Britain because he says he is bisexual.
The Jamaican migrant, 51, had been jailed for 18 years for attacks on two women.
An immigration judge said of the case: ‘There is nothing positive to say about his presence in the UK.’
The judge said that deporting the rapist would have been in the public interest but his appeal against deportation had to be allowed under the ECHR.
In total three people from Apanjon, which is run from this ramshackle business centre behind the East London Mosque, were arrested on suspicion of fraud and immigration offences
Earlier this year the Mail revealed how a Cameroonian man who was granted asylum in Britain after claiming to be gay was later revealed to have a secret wife and child.
Marius Kamna, 35, travelled to Britain on a temporary visa for the 2021 UN climate summit in Glasgow before claiming asylum in the UK based on his sexuality.
The asylum panel that granted him refugee status was never informed about his heterosexual marriage in Cameroon.
However, Mr Kamna insisted it was his marriage that represented the deception, not his claim to be gay.
‘I had so many secrets, I was persecuted,’ he said.
And last month a failed asylum seeker jailed for raping a 14-year-old schoolgirl has lost his bid to avoid deportation after a judge ruled he was not bisexual and remained a danger to Britain.
Karam Majdi, 27, had shamelessly claimed in a last-ditch asylum appeal that he could not be sent back to Egypt because he is bisexual and would face persecution.
But a judge has dismissed his appeal in full – finding that his deportation ‘was and remains in the public interest’.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said that asylum applicants ‘faking persecution are beneath contempt and mock real victims who need protection’.
‘To the gangs profiting from this disgraceful fraud: you will be prosecuted, stripped of your dirty money and shut down,’ she said.
‘And to those cheating the system, your claim will be thrown out, and you will be removed from this country.’
A conviction for asylum fraud carries a maximum sentence of ten years in prison.