Mick Hartley

After the Telegraph exposé of the Home Office asylum system last week – "the whole culture is rotten" – comes this Times report, "Revealed: How judges let criminals use Christianity to escape deportation":

Murderers, sex offenders and drug dealers are among migrants who have escaped deportation by claiming they have converted to Christianity, The Times has found.

They successfully argued that if they were returned to their home countries they would be persecuted because of their apparent conversion.

In one case, a Bangladeshi man who had served 12 years in prison for murdering his wife successfully appealed against the Home Office’s attempts to deport him, saying he was a Christian convert and that he would be at risk in his predominantly Muslim community in Bangladesh.

A judge allowed him to stay in the UK based on rights enshrined in Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which prevents removal where there are substantial grounds for believing that an individual would face serious harm from torture or from inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

In some cases, claims have been rejected as outlandish. One man’s appeal failed after a tribunal was told that he had spent a month going to a synagogue by mistake….

Analysis suggests that Iranians have been the most successful in avoiding deportation. In several cases, a claimant’s deportation was blocked even when the judge hearing their appeal concluded that their conversion was not genuine. Judges said that even the “perception” of being a Christian could result in lashes in Iran….

An Iranian man who was sentenced to four years in jail for drug and driving offences and resisting arrest managed to get his deportation order overturned despite referring to “Black Friday” rather than “Good Friday” and getting the denomination of his church wrong.

One asylum seeker admitted that he attended a synagogue for more than a month without realising that he was not in a Christian church.

One tribunal judge doubted that a claimant was “attracted to Christianity because it fulfilled a deep spiritual need”, given that they had told the court that “being a Christian is freedom and you can drink alcohol and be with girls”.

Some refreshing honesty, at least.