Serbian criminal not sent home as he has ‘forgotten the language’

A MIGRANT jailed for cannabis farming has been allowed to remain in Britain after he successfully claimed he could not be deported because he can longer speak his native language.

Clirim Kukaj, 30, an ethnic Albanian born and brought up in Serbia, successfully appealed his deportation on the grounds that returning him to his native country would breach his human rights as he no longer spoke Serbian and could only converse in Albanian.

Lawyers for Kukaj claimed this would mean he could not integrate back into Serbian society if he was deported by the Home Office.

He left Serbia at the age of 13 and entered Britain illegally before being granted indefinite leave to remain seven years later.

Immigration tribunal judge Fiona Lindsley allowed Kukaj’s appeal “on human rights grounds” despite claims from the Home Office that he is currently living with his brother, a Serbian, that he had survived in Serbia until he was 13 and that Albanian is an official minority language in Serbia.

The disclosure will revive calls for a rethink of human rights laws.

“This demonstrates why we need urgent reform of the asylum system and human rights laws to allow the rapid and effective deportation of dangerous criminals,” said a senior Tory MP.

Kukaj entered Britain “clandestinely” on April 10 2007 after spending the first 13 years of his life in Serbia. His claim for asylum was refused, but he was granted discretionary leave to remain until June 5 2010. He was still in the UK in April 2014 when he was granted indefinite leave to remain.

Six years later, he was convicted of being involved in the production of cannabis in June 2020 after a police raid found 580 plants worth nearly £500,000 at a property in Hardwick in Cambridgeshire.

Kukaj claimed he had not planted them, but said he was paid cash to cultivate them.

It was part of large-scale, organised drug-dealing, according to police.

Det Con Josh Coe said: “Organised crime groups can generate large sums of money with little regard for those who are forced to produce the cannabis as well as the landlords who are left with severely damaged premises.”

Within three months of Kukaj being jailed for 18 months, Priti Patel, then home secretary, warned him he would be deported. But within a month, his lawyers counter-claimed that removing him from the UK would be a breach of his human rights.

A first-tier tribunal backed his appeal, which the Home Office counter-appealed. It argued that the lower court had “overlooked considering how [Kukaj] had survived in Serbia until he was 13 years old” and failed to provide adequate reasons why it found he “no longer speaks Serbian when he lives with his brother, also Serbian”.

According to court documents, the Home Office also argued that “Albanian is a language spoken in Serbia and it is argued that this is a factor that would assist his integration”.

His lawyers disputed the claims that Albanian was recognised as an official language used in “provincial administration” in Serbia. They said he had dropped out of school in Serbia at the age of eight because of bullying.

The upper court found it was “sufficiently reasoned” and “entirely rational” that he should have been judged an Albanian speaker.

“We uphold the decision of the firsttier tribunal allowing the appeal on human rights grounds,” Judge Lindsley concluded.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “Any foreign national who is convicted of a crime and given a prison sentence is considered for deportation at the earliest opportunity. It is longstanding government policy that we do not routinely comment on individual cases.”

It follows The Telegraph’s disclosure last week of the decision to allow Albanian Gjelosh Kolicaj to remain in Britain despite being jailed for smuggling £8 million of his gang’s profits out of the UK in suitcases brought on to planes. Judges granted his appeal on the grounds that the Home Office failed to take sufficient account of his human rights and other claims in its decision.