Killer fought deportation claiming right to family life
...with his son who was also convicted of murder
A JAmAicAn used the ‘right to family life’ to dodge deportation before going on to commit murder, it can be revealed today.
Ernesto Elliott, 45, was a prolific offender with 17 crimes on his rap sheet including possession of an imitation firearm.
But following interventions by celebrities and Labour mPs, his lawyers lodged a last-minute challenge against deportation, citing Article 8 of the European convention on Human Rights.
He claimed it would breach his rights to be separated from his UK-based family, including son nico who went on to be convicted alongside his father of a horrific knife murder.
Ernesto Elliott’s appalling criminal record spanned 18 years from 2003, shortly after he arrived in the UK. Details of the scale of his lawbreaking will raise questions as to why he was not deported earlier.
Elliott’s arguments under Article
8 had already been rejected by the Home Office when he lodged an asylum application, his second, in the early 2010s, it is understood.
The mail revealed on monday that six months after he was sup
posed to be sent back to his native country in December 2020, he murdered 35-year- old nathaniel Eyewu-Ago. The challenge that blocked Elliott’s removal is thought never to have led to a full legal ruling because of his murder arrest.
An open letter campaigning against the Jamaica flight was signed by supermodel naomi campbell, actress Thandiwe newton and broadcaster and historian Professor David Olusoga.
A separate letter was signed by Labour politicians including Jeremy corbyn, Diane Abbott and Baroness Shami chakrabarti.
in February 2020, in the run-up to a previous Jamaica deportation flight, another letter attacking the plans was signed by Opposition leader Sir Keir Starmer and dozens of Labour mPs.
The cross-party letter to then Pm Boris Johnson demanded that ‘all further deportations are cancelled’ over an ‘unacceptable risk of removing anyone with a potential Windrush claim’.
Elliott was sent down for three years in 2018 for possession of a knife and an imitation firearm.
He was in breach of a suspended
‘Cancel all deportations’
sentence and also had convictions for knife and drugs offences.
Under immigration laws brought in by Labour in 2007, the Home Secretary must make a deportation order against any foreign criminal jailed for 12 months or more.
Possession and use of imitation firearms – as in Elliott’s case – is treated almost as seriously as functioning weapons because of the fear they instil.
Elliott and his 23-year- old son were jailed for life at the Old Bailey last month for the murder in Greenwich, south London.