This account begins at a busy junction on Whitechapel High Street, in the heart of London’s East End.

Tucked between Sports Direct and Betfred is the office of Apanjon, a name well known among the area’s sizeable Bangladeshi community. Roughly translated from Bengali, it means ‘one’s own people’.

The name carries particular significance for an organisation that campaigns for equality and justice for LGBT people in both Bangladesh, where homosexuality remains criminalised, and the United Kingdom.

Founded in 2017 under the slogan ‘love knows no gender’, Apanjon offers welfare support and hosts regular social and cultural activities for the community.

For years, there appeared to be little controversy surrounding its work. Its website’s public gallery shows a colourful collection of photographs, mostly featuring young men at Christmas celebrations, monthly meet-ups, restaurants and Pride events, often wearing matching T-shirts.

Now, however, questions have been raised over whether all the men pictured are genuinely gay, or whether some may have claimed to be LGBT in an attempt to strengthen asylum applications in Britain.

The Home Office is understood to be examining more than 100 applications potentially connected to the organisation. The cases involve people seeking protection under the European Convention on Human Rights from alleged persecution because of their sexuality in their home country.

The inquiry came to light after two men described as suspected ringleaders were arrested during dawn raids by Immigration Enforcement officers, who arrived wearing riot helmets and stab-resistant vests and carrying equipment to force entry.

The operation took place at a dilapidated Whitechapel residential block. Two men were later brought out of separate flats in handcuffs and driven away in a four-wheel-drive vehicle, in a scene more commonly associated with counter-terrorism or organised-crime investigations.

‘It was madness,’ one resident said, recalling how around a dozen officers entered the graffiti-covered building on Tuesday morning.

The resident said officers could be heard shouting, ‘Open the door now’, as children prepared to leave for school. Few neighbours understood what was happening. The Home Office had reportedly been investigating asylum claims raising concerns about Apanjon, which it described as a ‘Bangladeshi LGBT welfare organisation based in Whitechapel’, for several months.

It is alleged that some applicants were supplied with ‘evidence packages’ costing thousands of pounds. These reportedly contained forged paperwork, supporting letters and staged photographs, with a number of images said to have been taken at the same gay bars and clubs.

According to the Home Office, some Bangladeshi men first sought asylum on political grounds and later claimed to be gay after those applications were rejected.

The arrests do not establish that either the two men or Apanjon committed an offence. Both remain the subject of an ongoing investigation.

Even so, the high-profile raids are likely to reinforce claims that some people fabricate evidence about their sexual orientation in order to secure permission to remain in the UK.

‘It’s a massive problem. A lot of people are doing it,’ Ejel Khan, founder of the Muslim LGBT Network, told the Daily Mail.

Khan said he had encountered people who appeared to be seeking entry to Britain by making such claims.

He said people had previously offered him money to write recommendation letters, despite admitting to him that they were not gay. He said he refused to provide them.

‘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 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.

Three years ago, 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).

One of the reasons for the spike can be attributed to the backlog of applications which built up during the pandemic.

This is certainly not the whole story, however. Surely it cannot be a coincidence that the rise has corresponded with the proliferation of ‘Lefty Lawyers’ (former home secretary Dame Priti Patel’s description) along with a plethora of refugee groups and charities, some of whom are prepared to help migrants game the system, in any number of ways, for political reasons or simply for money.

It is a crowded field already occupied by criminal gangs.

There is also a more historic and systemic reason.

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 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.’

Theresa May, home secretary at the time, welcomed the ruling and introduced guidance for assessing claims based on sexuality.

The upshot, without going into the legal minutiae, meant a fairer and more humane policy if claimants were telling the truth.

But it also offered a process which was easier to circumvent if they weren’t.

So, depending on your point of view, there are two ways of looking at the Home Office protocols on how caseworkers should consider such asylum claims.

It runs to more than 40 pages and the tone is perhaps epitomised by this paragraph: ‘The term ‘homosexual’ may be offensive to some. The term ‘gay’ is one which is more globally used and recognised as being more neutral as a descriptor. In all instances, caseworkers should establish the terminology preferred by the claimant.’

Critics might wonder how any bogus applicants are exposed at all, given what they would describe as the intrinsic political correctness in the guidelines.

Yet there have been some glaring examples.

Immigration judges, the Home Office said, have previously found claims supported by Apanjon to be ‘unreliable, inconsistent and staged, in the case of the photos’. The group was cited in an immigration ruling in August involving a Bangladeshi man who claimed he would be at risk if he was returned home.

The claimant, identified only as MHK, said he was a familiar face at the Whitechapel-based group and had a boyfriend – an account backed up by a witness.

Explicit photographs were also produced to prove he was gay.

But the judge ruled the evidence was ‘contrived’ and the pictures, in particular, were fake – a decision upheld at appeal, which meant he lost his right to remain in the country. It is not known if this is one of the cases now under scrutiny by the Home Office.

There have been other cases with no connection to Apanjon. Last year, Albanian asylum seeker Esmir Demaj suffered a similar fate to ‘MHK’ after petitioning for the right to stay in Britain because he was a ‘gay’ man, but failed to reveal he was married to a woman. He was found to have deliberately ‘misled’ the Home Office. A more egregious culprit was Saheed Azeez, who was granted asylum in 2023 after claiming he might be killed for being gay in his native Nigeria.

The same Azeez went on to have three children with three women and run a £220,000 parcel fraud, which later resulted in a jail sentence of more than five years. Not that Apanjon is the only welfare group to make headlines recently. In April, an adviser for Worcester LGBT, a Midlands organisation which describes itself as a support group for gay and lesbian asylum seekers, was secretly filmed promising an undercover BBC reporter that she would help him prepare and memorise a false story for a Home Office interview.

‘There are a lot of organisations here where there are people like you who are not gay but are applying for the visa,’ she told him. ‘You are not alone.’

She admitted perpetrating the fraud for the past 17 years, which included providing fake photographs, letters claiming sexual relationships and a Worcester LGBT endorsement, all for £2,500.

The founder and chairman of the organisation strongly denied any wrongdoing and said there had been a ‘misunderstanding’.

Nevertheless, the ‘adviser’ had been ‘permanently removed from all association with Worcester LGBT’.

Shortly afterwards, the organisation announced it had closed. A message on Worcester LGBT website read: ‘We thank all members and supporters for their trust in us over the years… the decision was taken because the harm caused by the BBC’s reporting made it impossible for the organisation to continue operating.’

There is just one further thing to add about the group.

At a Worcester LGBT event more than 150 miles away in Beckton, east London, attended by 175 men, several present told undercover reporters working for the same BBC programme that hardly anyone at the gathering was gay, including one who said: ‘Nobody is gay here. Not even 0.01 per cent are gay.’

Clearly, there were a lot of ‘misunderstandings’ before Worcester LGBT shut down.

Back in Whitechapel High Street, the Apanjon office remained empty this week following the raids. The group also had a second address located in a private, gated alleyway off the main thoroughfare further along the road, consisting of a first-floor room with just enough space for a table, chairs and two cabinets.

The landlord said they ‘moved in’ on August 28, paid four weeks’ rent, but failed to pay him for the following month, between September and October, and had now vanished. When he rang Apanjon, he did not receive a reply.

‘I never saw anyone from the group,’ he said. ‘I never saw any clients or any migrants. They still owe me £350. I will legally pursue them for that.’

The investigation into Apanjon was welcomed by LGBT rights campaigner Peter Tatchell.

‘Last year, we spoke out after being overwhelmed by a surge in asylum seekers who we believed to be fake,’ he said in a statement issued by his charity, the Peter Tatchell Foundation.

‘Safeguarding the integrity of the asylum system is essential to maintaining public trust and, most importantly, to ensuring that real victims of homophobic persecution are not overlooked or refused a safe haven.’

Anyone found guilty over the Apanjon controversy would be removed from the country, the Home Office said.

‘The fact there is now a spotlight on this is good but this is really only the tip of the iceberg,’ said Robert Bates, of the Centre for Migration Control. ‘I don’t know what the Home Office can do to change the processes to stop this happening. All the anecdotal evidence suggests this is something rampant throughout the asylum system.’

Is there anyone, apart from the usual suspects, who believes otherwise?

Additional reporting: Isaac Crowson and Mark Branagan

Former The Bachelor Australia contestant Emily Simms says she is grateful Sam Wood did not choose her. Wood remains behind bars after being charged with domestic violence-related offences, while Simms claims her family saw him only hours before his arrest.

The former reality television contestant, who clashed with Wood during his 2015 season of the Channel 10 dating show, says she still stands by her criticism of him 11 years later.

In an interview with the Herald Sun, Simms said she had no regrets about her dramatic exit from the series, during which Wood eventually chose his now-wife, Snezana Markoski.

“I’m so glad Sam Wood didn’t choose me. That he didn’t give me a rose,” she said.

Simms, who now lives in Noosa with her husband Pierre and their two children, made headlines during the show’s third season when she abruptly left a rose ceremony.

The Melbourne advertising executive had questioned Wood’s conduct and decided she no longer wanted to pursue a relationship with him.

Her exit became one of the season’s most memorable moments, with Simms making clear she was deeply unimpressed by Wood.

“I’m horrified obviously about what has allegedly happened to Snez,” she said.

Simms said her husband spotted Wood on a family outing at Noosa Main Beach just hours before his arrest on October 3.

Wood had been holidaying at the popular Queensland destination with Snezana, their three young daughters and his 21-year-old stepdaughter, Eve.

According to Simms, her husband saw Wood appearing happy and relaxed as he spent time on the beach with his daughters during the school holidays.

The two men had met before Simms joined the dating show, although they were no longer in contact.

Police were called to the luxury apartment where Wood and his family were staying just hours after the sighting, following an alleged domestic violence incident.

Simms also reflected on her time filming The Bachelor, saying she was hurt by Wood’s suggestion that she had not opened up emotionally.

Simms said she had confided in Wood about her late brother’s mental health struggles, but felt he dismissed her vulnerability.

The former contestant also claimed that, following her dramatic departure from the reality series, several people who knew Wood had contacted her.

While she did not elaborate on what she had been told, she made it clear her opinion of the former Bachelor star was unchanged.

‘I have nothing pleasant to say about him. I didn’t then and I certainly don’t now,’ she said.

Her comments come after a court heard on Thursday that Markoski allegedly feared her celebrity fitness trainer husband was going to kill her during an alleged domestic violence incident at a beachfront apartment in the La Mer complex in Noosa. 

Police also told Queensland’s Maroochydore Magistrates Court on the Sunshine Coast of an earlier ‘similar’ incident in Victoria, which did not proceed further at the time.

Wood was denied bail and will remain behind bars after his arrest on Saturday night when police were called to the family’s luxury apartment on Noosa’s Hastings Street.

Sergeant Janette Grigoris told the bail hearing that Wood’s stepdaughter Eve, 21, called Triple Zero and ‘referred to the victim having been choked’.

The prosecutor told the court Markoski allegedly thought she was going to die and is now living in fear of retribution from the former Bachelor star. 

Sgt Grigoris said Markoski had not made a formal statement to police but had given a version of events in a video recording.

She told police the alleged attack ended only when one of the children called out.

The court was shown photographs of her alleged injuries and was told Markoski supported the criminal charges against Wood.

Sgt Grigoris told the court of a ‘previous’ incident in Victoria that was ‘similar in nature’, to which police were called, but the victim did not make a complaint.

Sergeant Grigoris alleged Wood’s behaviour had been ‘escalating’. 

Wood’s solicitor Mathew Cuskelly said his client denied strangling or assaulting his wife. He also confirmed on Friday that Wood would apply for bail in Queensland’s Supreme Court.

The court heard Wood may rely on self-defence if domestic violence charges over an alleged attack on his wife go to trial.

Forces linked to Blackwater founder Erik Prince suffered a significant battlefield setback in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo after an ambush left at least 20 people dead or wounded, including former UFC fighter Tim Kennedy.

The clash highlights Prince’s expanding role in Congo through his company, Vectus Global. Prince is an ally and supporter of President Donald Trump.

Vectus Global provides consulting and security services in Haiti and parts of Africa. In Congo, the company previously assisted the national army in securing the city of Uvira in South Kivu, an area where Rwanda-backed rebels control large parts of the east.

A veteran special operator said on his podcast earlier this week that Kennedy, a former US Green Beret and UFC competitor, had been injured in Congo.

Kennedy survived the attack after suffering three gunshot wounds to one leg, according to three sources. He is receiving treatment at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center outside Washington.

The retired mixed martial arts fighter hosts a widely followed podcast and has millions of social-media followers. Trump is also a prominent UFC fan and hosted fights at the White House this year.

The role played by Prince’s forces and the scale of the casualties had not previously been reported.

The September 17 attack in South Kivu left roughly 20 people dead and wounded, according to two sources working with the Congolese government.

At least seven Congolese nationals were involved in the deadly ambush. It also killed Justin Conaglen, a former member of New Zealand’s elite Special Air Service, whose remains have been returned home.

Conaglen, a lance corporal with the NZSAS, took unpaid leave from the military in March and formally left the armed forces in August, according to the New Zealand Herald.

His body was flown back to Auckland, where relatives and former special-forces colleagues gathered before his funeral in Northland.

New Zealand’s military said it was assisting Conaglen’s family with arrangements but declined to provide additional details.

A representative for Vectus Global declined to comment. A source with direct knowledge of the operation said the company had not previously suffered casualties in Congo.

One source working with the Congolese government said Rwandan forces supporting the M23 rebels may have tracked a surveillance drone back to the team’s position, allowing them to launch a surprise attack.

Representatives of the Congolese and Rwandan governments, as well as M23, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The US State Department and Walter Reed also declined to comment. Kennedy’s parents did not respond to requests for comment from Reuters.

A Congolese security source, who said some 20 people were wounded and killed in the attack, added that villagers were likely among the casualties as well. 

Reuters spoke to at least 10 sources either with direct knowledge of the attack or briefed ⁠on the outcome.

Prince’s initial mandate in Congo was to secure and improve revenue collection from the country’s vast mineral reserves, which have been plundered for decades, fueling relentless conflict in the east.

But in January and early February, his forces deployed to Uvira after Washington helped broker a deal for Rwandan-backed rebels to withdraw from the strategic town.

The size of Prince’s forces in Congo is unclear.

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One of the sources with direct knowledge of the attack said the Vectus team was traveling between locations when the ambush took place and its sophistication suggested Rwandan forces were involved.

‘It reinforces the need for DRC sovereignty ​to be restored. It’s an incredibly dangerous ⁠place right now,’ the source said.

Two other sources said the ambush was carried out by the Rwandan military. 

It has been claimed the wounded contractors were left stranded for as long as ten hours before being rescued.

Brent Tucker, a former Green Beret and Delta Force operator, said he had learned details of the deadly attack shortly after it happened but waited until he could corroborate the information before speaking publicly.

‘Of the three-man element, two of them were shot up pretty badly and one lost his life in the Congo,’ Tucker said on his Tier1 Podcast.

He claimed the men had been forced to wait between eight and ten hours for recovery.

‘One of the resources you’re going to want is if something goes wrong, someone to come get you and to get you quickly. We also know that didn’t happen,’ Tucker said.

His account of the alleged rescue delay has not been independently confirmed.

Tucker also revealed new details about the tiny team caught in the ambush, with a former special forces operator claiming just three contractors were involved.

‘There were three of them. Beside Tim Kennedy who was shot, I believe four times, there was a Kiwi, a New Zealander, an SAS member that was a part of the contract. He died. And the third guy also was hit multiple times,’ Tucker said.

The account suggests all three men were struck by gunfire, with Conaglen suffering fatal injuries while Kennedy and another unidentified contractor survived.

Tucker described it as ‘a pretty small element to be rolling around the Congo with’.

Kennedy was evacuated from the conflict zone through Burundi and Johannesburg in South Africa before receiving treatment in the United States.

The deadly attack has also thrown fresh attention on the scale of Erik Prince’s lucrative operations in Congo, where the Blackwater founder reportedly secured a $700 million agreement with the government. 

The arrangement, according to the New Zealand Herald, encompasses efforts to protect mining revenues alongside military assistance to Congolese forces battling armed groups in the country’s volatile east.

United Nations investigators have previously identified a secret military component to Prince’s Vectus Global contract, involving border security, strategic military advice, aircraft and the recruitment of former foreign military personnel.

Prince is the founder of now-defunct private military firm Blackwater, some of whose members were pardoned in 2020 for killing Iraqi civilians.

The State Department has said it does not have any contracts with Prince in Congo, though US officials have said they plan to work more closely with Vectus Global in Haiti.

The deal for Rwandan-backed rebels to withdraw from Uvira was ⁠part of wider agreements brokered by the Trump administration to try to end the conflict in eastern Congo.

Kennedy, a father of four, has posted his views on politics, culture, fitness and more on social media. He also runs a popular YouTube podcast in which he interviews UFC fighters, veterans, cultural disruptors and others.

He has often posted about his family, including four young children. In late August, he posted about ⁠having ‘incredible conversations about ​what being a man means and what sacrifice really looks like’ with his son. 

He did not disclose details about his upcoming trip to Congo.

The United Nations and Western powers say Rwanda backs M23, even exercising command and control over the group. Rwanda denies this. 

Fighting in the decades-long conflict flared early last year, with M23 fighters making rapid gains in the east, which is rich in tantalum, gold, lithium and other minerals.