26th July, 2020
A convicted Nigerian said by a judge to be the ‘prime mover in a criminal enterprise’ in the UK is being flown back to London, after another court ruled that his deportation was unlawful.
The Nigerian was jailed for four-and-a-half years and deported in 2018, but a judge has ordered the Home Office to fly him back to Britain.
The British government will bear the expenses, reports Daily Mail on Sunday.
In an immigration tribunal judgment published last week, Mr Justice Lane ruled that the unidentified Nigerian, had a right to have his appeal heard in the UK.
The Nigerian claimed he would be persecuted in his home country because he was bisexual, a Christian who converted from Islam and had paid for male prostitutes at a party while on holiday in Nigeria.
The ruling comes as six other Nigerian would-be deportees, were allowed to stay.
The Nigerians were due to be deported in 2017 from Stansted Airport, but the flight was halted by protesters.
In a written response to a parliamentary question by the Green Party’s Caroline Lucas, the Minister said two of the migrants were issued residence cards as family members of EU nationals.
Another three were granted leave to remain on ‘human rights grounds’ and the sixth was identified as a victim of trafficking.
Their removal was initially blocked by a group of Left-wing activists dubbed the ‘Stansted 15’ who cut a hole in a fence at the Essex airport.
The protesters, who were later convicted under a terrorism-related law, claim they stopped the plane because people on the flight were ‘at risk of persecution’.
One woman on the flight said: “My ex-husband said he knows I am being deported. He is waiting for me. He is planning to kill me. If he kills me- who will I look after my children?”
Conservative MP Peter Bone, who has repeatedly called for foreign criminals to be removed from the UK, said: ‘It’s very hard to understand how we finish up paying to take back someone who is a convicted criminal in this country and was already sent back to where he is a citizen.
“There is no logic to that at all. We have to send foreign criminals back to where they’ve come from. They can’t come here, accept our hospitality in the UK, break the law, get put in jail and then we can’t deport them.
‘I can’t fathom why anyone thinks they have the right to remain here.This is the kind of thing my constituents don’t understand and find mind-boggling.’
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