UK Home Office Unit Advised Police on Messaging After Belfast Stabbing by Asylum Seeker

After the June 8, 2026 stabbing of Stephen Ogilvie in Belfast, allegedly by 30-year-old Sudanese asylum seeker Hadi Alodid, the Research Information and Communications Unit advised police to identify people posting online calls to protest and to portray them as unsympathetic thugs rather than activists.

The unit worked with the Police Service of Northern Ireland's C3 intelligence unit on that effort. It has also briefed family liaison teams in the murder of Henry Nowak in Southampton by Vickrum Digwa, who falsely claimed he had been racially abused and acted in self-defence.

RICU has intervened to shape statements from victims' families in racially linked incidents. A source said the unit's fingerprints are visible on the statements released by families in volatile situations because they usually have a similar tone. The Research Information and Communications Unit is a 22-person team based in the UK Home Office.

It was established in 2007 by the late Charles Farr, a former MI6 officer, and was modelled on the Information Research Department, a propaganda unit set up by the Attlee government in 1948. The unit has used undercover operatives to plant stories in the media.

After the 2017 London Bridge attacks, operatives handed out flowers and a team in an unmarked van plastered walls with posters bearing the hashtags #TurnToLove, #ForLondon and #LoveWillWin.

After the 2014 beheading of British aid worker Alan Henning by Islamic State, RICU used a front operation to plant an image of a woman in a Union Jack hijab in the media. In 2016 the unit funded the boyband Mr Meanor to tour Muslim schools in Sheffield, Manchester and Runcorn singing songs against radicalisation.