Test case for UK bid to send home Somali asylum-seeker
The UK Home Secretary, Theresa May, has been accused of acting unlawfully by forcing the removal of failed Somali asylum-seekers to Mogadishu where they fear they will be murdered by Islamic militants, says a report in The Independent.
In what is being seen as a test case affecting thousands of Somalis in Britain, a judge has granted an injunction at the last minute halting the removal of a man (23), identified only as Abdullah, who was due to be flown back to Mogadishu last week. His lawyers argued successfully that a decision on his future should await the imminent findings of an immigration upper-tribunal. This will consider UK Government claims that Mogadishu is safe. The man was reprieved, but his lawyers still fear he could be removed within days or weeks depending on the findings of the tribunal, the report states.
In January, Abdullah was forcibly put on board a flight to Istanbul en route for Mogadishu but a last-minute legal challenge meant he was brought back to the UK. He has spent the past months on bail under curfew wearing an electronic tag until he was taken back into detention, according to the report. It says al-Shabaab, which was responsible for the assault in February on the presidential palace in which a government official died, has warned that individuals returning from the West would be targeted as infidels.
Full report in The Independent
The Home Secretary has lost another case, according to another report in The Independent. A Ghanaian nurse who force-fed her baby to death will not be deported after a court ruled it would breach her right to a ‘family life’.
The report says the woman has been granted permission to live in Britain indefinitely after a bid to deport her was overturned under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which protects the right to a ‘family life’. The nurse (33) was jailed for three years after she force-fed her 10-month-old daughter to death in 2011. The baby died of pneumonia caused by the inhalation of food into her lungs.
Her criminal history and the length of her sentence made her liable for automatic deportation under Home Office rules, which state that any foreign national sentenced to 12 months or more can be ‘automatically deported unless they can show that this would breach their rights’, the report states.
It notes Home Secretary Theresa May attempted to deport the nurse after she had served her sentence, but the woman lodged an appeal and won her case, citing Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Home Office is set to appeal against the tribunal’s decision. According to the report, a spokesperson added: ‘We firmly believe foreign nationals who break the law should be deported.’
Full report in The Independent