Judge fails to release foreign sex offender shock

“Judge frees illegal immigrant sex offender in human rights shocker”. That’s a story. “Judge leaves failed asylum seeker in jail without charge for potentially two years or more.” That, apparently, is not a story. But it is worth looking at the case, not least to dispel the notion that unaccountable UK judges spend much of their time releasing foreign criminals at the drop of a cat because of the Human Rights Act.

The case is R (Abdulrahman Abunasir) v Secretary of State. Abunasir had been released from an 18-month sentence for an attempted sexual assault by digital penetration, a “very serious and frightening sexual offence, committed against a young woman, while she was on her own in the street, by a man unknown to her and who had been in the country in all probability less than a fortnight” in April 2013.

While in jail he made an asylum claim saying he was a refugee from Syria. Language tests suggested he might actually be from Egypt. Bio tests did not. Served with a deportation notice he argued in November 2013 that he could not be returned to Syria “as to do so would breach the UK’s obligations under the Refugee Convention”. He completed his  sentence on the 13 January 2014 and was immediately detained under s. 36(1) UK Borders Act 2007 pending a decision whether to deport him. He is held under The Immigration Act 1971 Schedule 3 para 2(1).

Abunasir thus fell into a common limbo: foreign nationals whom the government does not want to release onto the streets of Britain but who cannot be deported because of fear of torture back home, for example or simply because of the seriousness of troubles in their own country. Here there was no way of engaging with authorities amid the Syrian chaos to establish Abunasir’s claim to nationality. The result has been he has remained in jail for 18 months beyond his prison sentence. He was deemed as being of high risk of offending, likely to abscond and had no family ties in Britain. Much work was done by investigators and the probation service to resolve the issues – the possibility of release under probation or return to Syria under the Facilitated Return Scheme (which involves the individual disclaiming rights to pursue legal action, which Abunasir seemed for a time willing to do). To no avail.