Islamist who ‘abused our hospitality’ to be deported

AN ISLAMIST terrorist who abused the State’s immigration system using multiple identities to plot acts of terror across Europe has lost his battle to stay here.

The 53-year-old, whose name and country of origin cannot be revealed by court order, claimed he would be at risk of torture if sent home. His immediate deportation was ordered by the High Court yesterday.

The man arrived in the State under a false name in 1997, secured asylum in 2000 and has lived here since on the basis of false claims he had survived a gun attack by government forces in his home country.

Instead, the man, referred to as Mr Y, had been convicted in his home country in 1996 of forming an Islamist terror group, murder and possession of ‘war weapons’, the court previously heard. European investigators later identified Mr Y as a member of a criminal organisation preparing acts of terrorism in the UK, here, Spain, Andorra and France, the court had heard.

Late last year, he was charged here with possession of forged Belgian identity papers and jailed. Yesterday morning he was freed from jail and rearrested for deportation.

Shortly after 4pm, Judge Richard Humphreys ordered the man’s immediate deportation, saying there was an ‘enormously strong public interest’ in the order being enforced immediately. He said it was ‘not in the public interest that an applicant who has from the outset abused the immigration system of the State’ should be allowed to stay here.

Refusing to allow any stay pending an appeal to the Supreme Court, the judge said Mr Y had abused the hospitality of the EU.

The man’s legal team later served papers on the State with a view to a hearing before three Supreme Court judges on Monday.

By the time the appeal is heard on Monday, the man may have been removed from the State.