Sex predator can stay because home country can't treat his mental illness

Telegraph

22-06-2025

A dangerous sexual predator has been allowed to stay in the UK after claiming his home country could not treat his mental illness.
An immigration tribunal backed the Bangladeshi man's claims that he should be allowed to stay in the UK despite his convictions for a violent sexual assault on a stranger when he was 17.
The Metropolitan Police also provided evidence that he had carried out further sexual offences in the decade since the assault even though he had not been convicted of them.
He was also convicted for conspiring to supply 'significant' quantities of heroin as part of a county lines gang.
'High risk of harm to the public'
The Home Office argued that he was a sexual predator who was likely to reoffend if he remained free and presented a 'high risk of harm to the public.'
A lower tier immigration tribunal, however, accepted expert evidence that he had undergone rehabilitation and could be safely managed in the community.
It also agreed that he would face persecution in breach of article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) if returned to Bangladesh, which did not have the facilities to treat his mental illness, and had a reputation for treating those suffering such ill health as outcasts. It ruled the man should be given asylum.
However, its decision was overruled by an upper tribunal which concluded it was mistaken in its assessment that the Bangladeshi was not still a sexual predator who posed a threat to the public. It ordered that there should be a re-hearing of the case by a new lower tier tribunal.
The case, disclosed in court papers, is the latest example uncovered by The Telegraph where illegal migrants or convicted foreign criminals have been able to remain in the UK or halt their deportations.
Ministers are proposing to raise the threshold to make it harder for judges to grant the right to remain based on Article 8 of the ECHR, which protects the right to a family life, and Article 3, which which protects against torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, has pledged to change the law so that any foreign national convicted of a sex offence will be barred from refugee status in the UK.
The tribunals were told that the Bangladeshi had attacked the woman after he offered to walk her to a bus stop, claiming that she was drunk and needed his help. As they walked through a park, he pulled her to the ground, ripped off her bra and started to assault her.
He was 17 at the time and handed an 18 month detention and training order at a secure training unit for sexual assault.
The judge said the Bangladeshi man had been 'insincere' in his expressions of remorse and failed to recognise his guilt.
'Highly vulnerable'
However, the lower tribunal set store on an expert witness who backed his rehabilitation and that he was at low risk of any further sexual offending. This was despite evidence that the expert had been previously heavily criticised over a similar risk assessment.
The upper tribunal concluded that he 'posed a high risk of reoffending and a high risk of harm to the public having regard to the particular nature of the offence for which he has been convicted.'
It said the victim, who was highly vulnerable, had suffered serious psychological harm which had led to her attempting to commit suicide.
The upper tribunal ruled: 'The decision of the First-tier Tribunal involved material errors of law. We set aside the decision and do not preserve any findings of fact. The matter is remitted to the First-tier Tribunal to be reheard before a judge other than the judges who decided the [Bangladeshi's] appeal proceedings.'