FARCICAL
Somali thug won damages for botched deportation... weeks later he’s jailed for assault on a woman
A SOMALIAN thug has made a mockery of deportation procedures by winning a compensation battle – and then continuing his one-man crimewave.
Weeks after the High Court ruled Abdi Yusuf was eligible for damages for being detained unlawfully pending deportation, the 41-year-old created more trouble.
He was convicted of assaulting a defenceless woman in the street and has been jailed for six months. Yusuf had been detained after completing a previous jail term because he was considered at high risk of absconding and offending again.
But after securing his release from an immigration removal centre and launching a court bid for compensation, he went on to commit a further violent offence. His latest jail term is likely to hold up his deportation until at least next year.
The case raises further questions about the system for kicking out foreign criminals.
At huge expense to the taxpayer, Yusuf has been fighting to stay in the UK since completing a four-year jail sentence for assault in 2012. Sources believe the state is facing a six-figure bill for compensation, court, legal and detention costs.
Yusuf came to London legally in 1989 sponsored by an aunt, Maryan Hassan. In 1992, when he was 17, he was granted indefinite leave to remain in Britain.
But he embarked on a criminal path, amassing ten convictions for 20 offences and has served prison sentences for actual and grievous bodily harm.
The jail terms served as an automatic trigger for him to be deported back to Somaliland, an independent state in Somalia.
At the High Court last month, a judge ruled that much of the time he was in custody awaiting deportation was justified. However, he held that due to a legal technicality the final six months he spent in detention were unlawful.
The compensation ruling came a few weeks before Yusuf was due before Stratford Magistrates in east London to stand trial for assault by beating a woman. He failed to attend the hearing and a warrant was issued for his arrest.
The trial went ahead without him and the court heard how Yusuf and his co-accused, Cali Bashir, 48, of Clapton in east London, had subjected the victim to an appalling ordeal.
On a 999 recording, a female university student pleaded with the call handler: ‘Two men are hitting her.’ She said they had started undressing her and ‘pushed her against the railings’.
She added: ‘She has got blood on her and one of the men is saying he is going to knock her out. They are saying they are going to kill her.’ In his absence, Yusuf was found guilty of one count of assault by beating. By chance he was arrested over a separate matter a few days later and hauled before court.
The judge described the recording as ‘the most distressing 999 call I have heard in some time’.
Scotland Yard said Yusuf was sentenced to six months in prison on June 12. His younger brother, who asked not to be named, told the Mail that Yusuf was an alcoholic who was ‘the nicest person you could meet when sober’.
Speaking at his home in north London, he added: ‘My brother is not an economic migrant. He came here because people were being murdered because of ethnic cleansing in Somalia.
‘Before he became ill through alcoholism, he was a chef and he is a big Arsenal fan.’
Yusuf’s co-accused – from Somalia – admitted two counts of assault. He was bailed to reappear for sentencing on June 29.
Asked about the case last night, a Home Office spokesman said: ‘Foreign nationals who abuse our hospitality by committing crimes in the UK should be in no doubt of our determination to deport them. We have removed more than 37,000 foreign offenders since 2010.’