Foreign sex attacker gets £27k damages – 3 times victim’s payout

AN illegal immigrant jailed for attempted rape received £27,000 in compensation – more than three times his victim’s entitlement – after he was held in custody too long.

Bashdar Abdulla Qarani, 36, was supposed to have been kicked out of Britain when he was refused asylum two months after sneaking into the UK in January 2005. He had falsely claimed to be an Iranian opposition party member fleeing persecution.

But the Kurd managed to dodge deportation for 12 years, despite racking up a string of offences, including battery, theft and carrying a knife between January 2010 and November 2011. He has a history of absconding, breaching his licence conditions to go on the run several times. But despite his criminal history, he was granted indefinite leave to remain in August 2010.

Just two years later – on November 13, 2012 – Qarani was jailed at Swansea Crown Court for four years after attempting to rape a woman in the Welsh city.

On March 4, 2013, a deportation order was issued so the sex offender could be removed from the UK at the end of his sentence.

Accordingly, when Qarani was automatically released on licence halfway through his sentence in 2014, he was locked up again under immigration laws to stop him fleeing before his deportation.

Officials spent months trying to verify his nationality, as he had no identity papers and friends gave false contact information for his relatives.

He was even shown a map of Iran and asked to point out where his home village was, but Qarani could not even say where the capital Tehran was.

Eventually, officials concluded he had lied about his nationality and began trying to establish whether he was Iraqi. Qarani then sued the Home Office for the delays, saying it breached his human rights by not processing his

Lied about his nationality

deportation quickly enough.

Deputy High Court Judge Mr Justice Mott acknowledged that the sex offender had a history of absconding, but ruled that he had been unlawfully detained for 11 months prior to his release last December. The judge awarded him £27,000 in compensation. He is still due to be deported.

It is not known whether the woman he tried to rape, who cannot be named for legal reasons, received any damages. But under Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority rules, she would only have been entitled to around £7,500.

Charity Voice4Victims said the case showed the ‘imbalance’ between the rights of offenders and victims. The Home Office said it did not comment on individual cases.