A Dublin-based immigration solicitor, who filed a complaint with gardaí after receiving online threats of violence and arson, says he no longer feels safe walking alone in the city centre.
Imran Khurshid, a partner with Daly Khurshid Solicitors LLP, contacted gardaí last Friday after he received an email and saw messages on the X social media platform calling for his business to be burned down.
Mr Khurshid received a stream of threats online after an account posted a photograph of him saying his firm “specialises in getting foreigners into Ireland and helping foreigners remain here”.
One X user called for Mr Khurshid to be “burnt out and chased out of Ireland”, others called for the solicitors’ firm to be “burned down”, while another posted an image of a burning building.
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One requested the address of the firm’s office, which was shared by a separate user, while another wrote a very abusive comment.
Mr Khurshid’s firm also received an email last Friday entitled “warning”. It said: “We know who you are and what you are doing ... Let this be your only warning.”
The solicitor has been practising in Dublin for nearly a decade and never received threats before he ran in the 2019 local elections. Even then, he said, they amounted to “just some racism” rather than anything more sinister.
He admitted feeling “surprised and concerned” by the increase in online attacks since 2022, which was when Ukrainian refugees started arriving in Ireland in large numbers following Russia’s invasion of the country. “I’m more cautious now and have stopped walking around the city centre in the last few months. I drive into the office and I drive home,” he said.
Mr Khurshid was particularly concerned to see the address of his solicitors’ firm shared on X and has warned people working in the building’s reception area to “be careful”.
“We are safe in the building for now because we have an appointments system, we don’t attend to walk-in customers,” he said. “I’m watching off the shoulder a bit more, to be sure I’m in the company of people I trust.
“I think this stuff is very damaging for the community. I love Ireland, I love the Irish people and I’d never received hate or disrespect in the 17 years I’ve been here, until now.”
Mr Khurshid said gardaí at the Bridewell immediately responded to last Friday’s email about the threats and an officer visited his office on Tuesday to take a statement. However, he said gardaí failed to respond when he received a direct threat via email in June 2022. This warned that the sender had been “following you around the Dublin embassy for the last few days” and that “Ireland is for the Irish and only the Irish”.
Mr Khurshid believes the Dublin riots last November sparked a change in how people perceive and approach immigration.
“One incident can change a lot, there was a lot of anger building up before the riots, rightly or wrongly. If we don’t act or deal with this now, it could become a much bigger problem,” he said.
A Garda spokesman said the force “does not comment on named individuals” or any “security arrangements for individuals in general” but encouraged victims of online or in-person harassment to report the incident to their local Garda station.
Victims should take screenshots, save messages and images and block all communication with the person targeting them, he said. “Significant efforts have also been made to develop and provide specialist training within An Garda Síochána as we aim to increase awareness among Gardaí of how online harassment can occur.”
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