A rapist whose deportation was dramatically thwarted when a protest by virtue-signalling passengers prevented the plane from taking off is still in the UK four years later, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
A blizzard of legal challenges by Left-wing lawyers have repeatedly torpedoed Home Office attempts to kick out the man, who is in his 30s.
On another occasion three years ago, he was believed to be on the airport tarmac waiting to be led on to another flight, only for a fresh appeal by his lawyers to stop his removal.
The rapist – who the MoS is banned by a draconian court order from identifying – arrived as a refugee from Africa claiming that he was persecuted in his own country. He repaid Britain’s generosity by targeting a teenage girl and viciously raping her.
When he was released after more than four years in prison, the Home Office tried to deport him, but an MoS investigation has established that he has had no fewer than 15 immigration tribunal hearings since 2016.
Taxpayers have been left to pay more than £500,000 in court, legal and detention fees.
The shocking saga echoes the tactics used by activist lawyers to halt the Home Office’s plans to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda.
A European Court of Human Rights judge last week made an 11th-hour order that grounded the inaugural fight to the East African country after a string of legal claims made on behalf of asylum seekers in UK courts failed.
The rapist’s victim last night said it was ‘disgraceful’ the man had not been deported, adding that she has almost given up hope that he will ever be kicked out.
‘It is absolutely ridiculous. He has no right to be here after what he has done,’ she said.
‘I just don’t understand how it is still ongoing, how we haven’t got rid of him yet. We haven’t got the power to do what needs to be done.
‘It’s just frustrating and really disheartening and it feels like we will never be rid of him – that he is always going to be there, over my shoulder.’
In his latest attempt to stay in the UK, the man claims his life would be at risk from terrorists if he is removed from Britain.
The Home Office believes his supporters planted a fake online video, which purported to show extremists threatening to kill him.
The rapist has used every available legal lever to frustrate his removal, including claims that he was a victim of modern slavery and his human rights would be breached because he would face persecution or take his own life if removed.
Government lawyers have successfully fought off three claims by the rapist and his lawyers for judicial review but have still failed to kick him out of Britain.
When each legal avenue has been exhausted, his lawyers have simply submitted a fresh challenge with new reasons why he should not be deported.
In an astonishing move, the Home Office has arranged accommodation and a generous package of mental health care for the man, who is said to be at risk of suicide, in the country to where he is due to be removed. Even this has not secured his deportation.
In 2016, Theresa May, the then Home Secretary, stripped the man of his refugee status after he had served his sentence, and ordered that he be deported.
This, however, was simply the opening salvo of a tortuous legal saga.
The following year, an immigration judge sitting in the First Tier Tribunal struck out the offender’s appeal against his deportation and highlighted that the man had failed to take responsibility for his crime.
Then in 2019 a judge in the Upper Tribunal again rejected the man’s fight to stay in the UK, describing his case as ‘absolutely hopeless’.
By this time, the man was claimed to be suffering from serious mental health problems and his deportation was delayed so he could be assessed by a consultant psychiatrist.
He also claimed that he was a victim of modern slavery before he entered the UK.
The psychiatrist said the man was suffering from ‘severe depression’ and a serious mental disorder and that he was at ‘high risk’ of suicide.
The claims have infuriated his victim who has suffered years of anguish and despair.
The expert’s findings were contradicted by another psychiatrist, appointed by the Home Office, who found that while he was suffering ‘some depressive symptoms’, they did not qualify as a diagnosis of depression.
Nevertheless, the Home Office contacted a clinician in the country to where he was to be sent, who agreed to help him. Officials even offered to use taxpayers’ money to pay for a personalised care plan.
In a breakthrough in May 2020, a judge in the Upper Tribunal backed a decision by Home Secretary Priti Patel that the man had no real prospect of persuading a court that his deportation would breach his human rights.
But even this did not end the wrangling. The rapist launched yet another human rights appeal after alleging that extremists in the country where he is due to be deported had threatened to kill him in a video posted on Facebook.
The Home Office claims the video, plus three online news articles, are fake and have been planted by the man’s friends and family ‘to engineer a claim and prevent his imminent removal’.
During a tribunal hearing earlier this year, Rory Dunlop QC, for the Home Office, described the video as ‘poor quality’ and ‘amateurish’ and that ‘it does not bear the hallmarks’ of a genuine terror group video.
He said the timing of the video’s release was ‘suspicious’, adding: ‘It was just when the appellant was about to be removed.’
He revealed that when an immigration officer served the rapist with removal papers in 2020, the criminal replied: ‘I am two steps ahead of you. You think it’s over [but] it’s not.’
‘What possible reason does he have to say that if he doesn’t know about the planting of the video?’ Mr Dunlop said, adding that the man was a ‘thoroughly dishonest and devious person’ and the Government had made a generous offer to support him after his deportation.
‘It was a belt-and-braces offer that we stand by simply because we want to do everything that is possible to protect the public in the UK from this man and deport him.’
The MoS has tried to get the order that bans the man’s identity from being published overturned, but a judge ruled in favour of the rapist.