Dubai: To prevent adults from pretending to be children in order to expedite their asylum applications, the UK government plans to implement X-ray age checks.

Following the horrific murder of a prospective Royal Marine in 2019, who was killed by an Afghan asylum seeker who claimed to be 14 upon entering Britain, X-ray checks will be quickly implemented to identify adults who fabricate their age.

According to a report in The Telegraph on Tuesday, Home Office Minister Chris Philp said that the way Afghan national Lawangeen Abdulrahimzai took advantage of legal loopholes to enter the UK was a "very powerful illustration" of why age checks for immigrants need to be changed.

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The government will move "quickly" to implement X-rays and other scientific age checks to prevent adult migrants from claiming to be children.
Abdulrahimzai allegedly entered the UK in 2019 five years younger than his actual age before fatally stabbing Thomas Roberts in Bournemouth, Dorset, last March during a dispute over an e-scooter.

Before the UK granted him permission to remain in the country in December 2019, Norwegian authorities had rejected the Afghan's asylum application weeks earlier.

Abdulrahimzai was given a place at a nearby secondary school and was placed with a female foster carer after claiming to be an unaccompanied child fleeing the Taliban.

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Apparently lying about his age and being an adult, he shot and killed two other migrants in Serbia on his way to the UK, according to media reports. According to Philp, the case demonstrated why the government was correct to change the immigration system with stricter laws that will see migrants detained for entering the UK illegally and sent back to their home country or a third state, like Rwanda, where they can seek asylum. Philp made this claim on the BBC.

He pretended to be 14 years old, and he and immigration attorneys dragged out the process for years before it was realised he was an adult, the minister said. It illustrates the need for more reliable, stringent age assessment techniques.

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"What we need to do is introduce scientific age assessment techniques, such as wrist X-rays, that are used in other European nations. The immigration minister will soon introduce those accurate methods of determining physical age.