An illegal immigrant who falsely claimed to be a tortured Afghani refugee with a severe disability and fraudulently claimed almost £400,000 in benefits has been sentenced to seven years in prison in Britain

Mohamed Bouzalim, 37, a Moroccan national, has admitted to dishonestly entering Britain and exploiting the British welfare system. Sentencing him at Isleworth Crown Court, Judge Simon Oliver said that Bouzalim has committed fraud on a grand scale over nine years and was unscrupulous and manipulative. Oliver said that he rejected Bouzalim's claim he had been tortured and had a mental illness. Oliver said that Bouzalim claimed to be an Afghani refugee whose father was killed by the Taliban and he was tortured, to gain the sympathies of immigration authorities, and that this lie started the spiral of deceit. Crown Prosecutor Lyall Thompson had told the court that Bouzalim had sat in his bed shaking and pretending to be unable to walk when a social services worker from Camden Council visited, but soon after the assessor left, police witnessed him walking out of the house. Thompson said that a video of Bouzalim dancing at his wedding and the fact that he passed a driving test in an unadapted car was proof of his disability being a hoax. He said that Bouzalim also duped three British universities into believing that he was a Belgian national so he was eligible for discounted fees given to European Union citizens. Bouzalim's siblings, Rachid, 35, Abdallah, 39, and Zahra, 41, were given 12-month suspended sentences for assisting him.