Syrian refugees in UK threaten legal action over Home Office pause on settlement decisions

WARSAW: Poland will introduce temporary controls along borders with Germany and Lithuania on July 7, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Tuesday, echoing several other European Union countries in reimposing frontier checks to stem illegal migration.

Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany itself have also brought back border controls, underlining a public backlash against undocumented migration that has strained the EU’s Schengen passport-free travel zone.

“We consider the temporary reintroduction of controls necessary to reduce the uncontrolled flows of migrants across the Polish-German border to a minimum,” Tusk told a meeting of his cabinet.

Tusk’s liberal government has been accused by nationalist and far-right opposition parties of accepting numerous illegal migrants being sent back from Germany. The government had argued that the numbers were limited.

Debate over migration in Poland has turned increasingly heated in recent weeks, with far-right activists starting to organize patrols along the border with Germany.

Germany said in February that it was extending its own temporary border controls for six months.

Tusk, who has previously called on Berlin to do more to help its neighbors protect the EU’s external border, criticized Germany’s approach to migrants at its own frontier, saying it placed excessive pressure on Poland.

“Poland’s patient position after Germany formally introduced unilateral border controls is wearing out,” Tusk said.

He added that it had become difficult to determine whether migrants being sent from Germany to Poland should really be returned there under EU rules stating that migrants should apply for asylum in the first member state they enter.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Tuesday Germany wants to preserve the Schengen system, which allows passport-free movement, but this could only work if it was not abused by criminals who smuggle migrants.

“We know that the Polish government also wants to impose border controls with Lithuania in order to limit illegal border crossings from Lithuania to Poland,” Merz told a news conference. “So, we have a common problem here that we want to solve together.”

Knut Abraham, the German government’s commissioner for Poland, was critical of the tilt toward border restrictions.

“The solution cannot lie in pushing migrants back and forth between Poland and Germany or in cementing border controls on both sides,” he was quoted by Die Welt newspaper as saying.

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys told a news conference that the Polish government had informed him about its decision, BNS news agency reported.

“(We need to see) what measures should be most effective, while maintaining the expectation that they will not violate our common interest in having free movement of persons, and will also contribute to our goal of firmly and solidly protecting the external border of the EU and NATO,” BNS quoted him as saying.

Poland has been facing what it says is a migrant crisis orchestrated by Belarus and Russia on its eastern border since 2021. Both countries deny encouraging migrants to cross.

LONDON: A 92-year-old man was on Tuesday told he would die in prison after he was jailed for a 1967 rape and murder, in what is thought to be the UK’s oldest solved cold case.

Ryland Headley, who was convicted of raping and killing 75-year-old Louisa Dunne after breaking into her house nearly 60 years ago, was sentenced to life with a minimum term of 20 years.

After passing sentence at Bristol Crown Court in southwest England, judge Derek Sweeting told Headley: “You will never be released, you will die in prison.”

He said that Headley, who was 34 at the time of the crime, had “violated the sanctity and safety of Mrs.Dunne’s home where she had every right to feel secure.

“She must have experienced considerable pain and fear before her death.”

The judge mentioned Headley’s previous convictions for breaking into the homes of two elderly widows in 1977 and raping them.

He was initially sentenced to life in jail for those convictions, which was later reduced to seven years on appeal.

They showed “chilling pattern of behavior,” the judge added.

Police reopened Dunne’s case in 2023 and matched DNA from the victim’s skirt and other items from the original probe to Headley.

Doughty Street Chambers, the legal team representing Headley, said it was Britain’s oldest cold case murder — an unsolved case for which new information emerges.

During the initial investigation, police had found a left-hand palm print from Dunne’s home, where she was found dead from strangulation.

The palm print was compared to 19,000 men to no avail at the time.

At the time, Headley was a railway worker who lived just outside the area in which men and boys were asked to give prints.

Reaching a dead-end, police sealed away forensic evidence for half a century. Both DNA testing and later Headley’s palm print resulted in matches.

When Headley was arrested at his home last November, he told detectives: “I don’t know what you are talking about. Very strange, very strange.”

“For 58 years, this appalling crime went unsolved and Ryland Headley, the man we now know is responsible, avoided justice,” said Charlotte Ream of the Crown Prosecution Service.

Dunne’s granddaughter Mary Dainton told the court the murder had a “far-reaching effect” on her family.

“I feel it falls to me to speak for the people who are no longer here,” she said.

Earlier, Dainton said: “I was just 20-years-old when my grandmother died and I’m now almost the same age as she was when she was killed.”

Police said they were looking into other possible cold cases Headley could be linked to.

“Ryland Headley has now been convicted of three rapes of elderly women within their own addresses, and in the case of Louisa Dunne, her murder as well,” said Dave Marchant, of Avon and Somerset Police, on Monday.

“I think there’s every possibility that there are other offenses out there — over the 60s, 70s, however long a time period — which Mr.Headley could be culpable for.”