May’s bid to oust foreign criminals is given boost

Euro judges’ landmark ruling

EUROPEAN human rights judges have delivered a boost to Home Secretary Theresa May’s campaign to kick illegal immigrants and foreign criminals out of the country.

In a landmark ruling, they undermined the idea that no foreigner should be thrown out of a country if it will interfere with their right to a family life.

Eight judges of the European Court of Human Rights found that Russia was justified in deporting a 45-yearold man for breaking immigration laws even though he went to live there more than 20 years ago and has a Russian wife and son.

Robert Muradeli had never committed a crime or any other offence more serious than traffic violations. But the Strasbourg court said that the Russian authorities had not breached any human rights rules when they deported him in 2011.

It follows years of Tory frustration over the ease with which illegal immigrants and foreign criminals can dodge deportation or delay it for years by claiming that it would breach their right to a family life under the European Convention on Human Rights.

A number of the 760 foreign criminals on the run in Britain have used the clause to block their deportation, and British judges have repeatedly upheld even the most spurious claim to a family life.

MPs voted for new guidelines in 2012 which said that any foreign criminal sentenced to more than four years in jail should not be able to plead family rights as a reason to stay in Britain.

Mrs May has also introduced a system under which foreign criminals are deported and only then allowed to appeal to the courts against removal.

She has promised the system will be extended to illegal immigrants if the Tories win the election.

The European judges – whose rulings are supposed to be followed by 47 countries including Russia – heard that Georgian-born Muradeli had gone to Russia in 1992, had married in the city of Penza in 1994 and had a son in 1995. However, he failed to keep his permits up to date.

Muradeli told the judges that his son needed a father, that his wife needed his financial support to pay back a property loan, and that his family had no links to Georgia.

Lawyers for Russia argued that it was necessary to deport him to ensure immigration laws were obeyed.

The Strasbourg ruling said that by breaking immigration rules Muradeli had ‘demonstrated consistent disregard of the laws, regulations and public order of the host country’. It added that he had been deported to Russian-speaking Belarus.

‘Consistent disregard of laws’