(Jamaica Observer) A Jamaican who was convicted in the UK, and who said he was illegally detained before being deported, has won £1 in damages from the Home Office, the Telegraph reported yesterday.
The man, known only as LE, fought the case in the High Court and Court of Appeal even after being deported, the report said.
The judges ruled that part of the time he was locked up “was technically unlawful because there was a failure to carry out monthly reviews of his custody,” the report said.
The man, 47, had spent 20 years in Britain and served seven years in jail “for plotting kidnap and blackmail” before his deportation. But not before he had run up huge taxpayer-funded legal bills for a string of court and tribunal hearings.
His legal team fought the case and won a ruling that, “as there was a failure to carry out monthly reviews of his custody, his detention was unlawful for about seven months in 2006”.
LE arrived in the UK as a visitor in 1989 but was allowed to stay on indefinitely, even after his marriage to a British citizen broke down, the Court of Appeal heard.
In 1995 he was charged with having crack cocaine with intent to supply and obtaining a false passport by deception but was deemed mentally unfit to stand trial after being diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, and he spent two and a half years in a mental hospital.
He was awarded the £1 in damages.
