Drug kingpin’s four-year battle to remain
THE leader of a drug ring that flooded a city with heroin and cocaine has fought a four-year human rights battle against deportation to somalia.
The Home office made an order to remove yahya Hashi four years ago after serving his eight-year sentence for conspiracy to supply cocaine and heroin. Investigating officers said the group he led ‘had been responsible for a large proportion of class a drug supply in Exeter and further afield for some time’.
Hashi, 33, and other dealers travelled from london to Devon up to five times a week, staying at addresses in the city by intimidating vulnerable adults or drug users.
Despite the gravity of his crime, for which he was convicted in 2015, he remained in the UK at the start of this year. His first appeal was allowed on the basis he would be at risk of harm from terror group al shabaab in somalia, given he was a member of a minority clan.
He also claimed his deportation would breach his right to his family life in the UK, as he had lived her for 17 years and his mother, grandmother, wife and children were here.
But this decision was overturned by an upper tribunal judge, who ruled the lower tribunal had made a mistake in law.
A fresh hearing was ordered, which was further delayed last December.
Other convicted foreign criminals who have been allowed to stay in Britain after arguing they had a right to a private or family life in this country include:
A Malawian rapist who won the right to remain because his deportation would breach the rights of his sick wife under the European Convention on Human rights;
A Bangladeshi sex attacker who successfully argued he had a right to a family life in the u K because he had not offended for 13 years;
An Iranian man convicted of a ‘sustained, violent and utterly terrifying’ assault on his former partner who was allowed to remain because his deportation would add to his mother’s depression;
A sex offender who successfully appealed against his deportation to Zimbabwe by arguing it would be unfair on his youngest son if they were separated;
A drug dealer with more than a dozen criminal convictions and four prison sentences who was allowed to remain because it would be ‘unduly harsh’ for his five-year-old son to return to nigeria with him.