EU court: UK can’t kick out Hamza girl over jail smuggling
A MOROCCAN criminal who cannot automatically be deported from Britain has been named as the daughter-in-law of hate preacher Abu Hamza.
Ministers are determined to kick the woman out of the UK after she spent a year in jail for smuggling a mobile phone SIM card into his high-security prison under her burka.
The European Court of Justice’s top legal adviser has indicated that because she is the sole carer for her four-year-old British son she cannot be expelled unless she poses a ‘serious’ threat to society.
There is an order banning the media from naming the woman, known only as CS.
But she was identified as the daughter-inlaw of hook-handed Hamza – who for years spouted evil on Britain’s streets and is now serving life in America for terror offences – by a Tory MP using Parliamentary privilege.
Philip Davies told the House of Commons yesterday that this was ‘a very, very serious matter for the security of this country’.
Raising a point of order, he said: ‘You may have seen the reports in the newspapers that European judges have ruled that a Moroccan criminal cannot be deported from the country despite the Home Office saying that she committed serious offences which threaten the values of society.
‘Surely this is something that should be raised in this House, that the Home Office minister should be making a statement about today?’
The case intensifies pressure on David Cameron, whose deal with the EU ahead of an in-out referendum did not even touch on the powers of the European Court of Justice over British law.
Vote Leave spokesman Robert Oxley said: ‘ This dangerous farce shows just how damaging the EU is for our security. The only way we can fight terrorism is to vote Leave and take control – it’s the only safe option.’
The ECJ’s chief legal adviser dealt a blow to Theresa May on Thursday when he said non-EU offenders who are the sole carers for children with UK nationality could not be booted out ‘simply’ because they have committed a crime.
But in a crumb of comfort for the Home Secretary, ECJ Advocate General Maciej Szpunar said expulsion could be allowed in ‘exceptional circumstances’.
He said a foreign offender who was sole carer of a British child aged under 16 could be flown home if they presented a ‘genuine, present and sufficiently serious’ threat to society, including public security.
If the ECJ backs his preliminary opinion – and the judges rarely disagree – it potentially opens the door for hundreds of low-level foreign criminals to claim the right to stay in Britain.
Hamza’s daughter-in-law married his eldest British son Mohamed Mostafa in 2002. In 2005 she was granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK.
In 2011 the couple had a son who holds British citizenship. But the marriage ended in divorce, leaving her in sole care of the child.
In May 2012 ‘CS’ was jailed after attempting to smuggle contraband – the mobile phone SIM card – into a high-security Belmarsh prison in South-East London, where her father-in-law was being held
Hamza was detained as a Category A prisoner at the time following his conviction for inciting murder and pending extradition on terror charges to the US.
CS was jailed for 12 months at Blackfriars Crown Court on May 4 after she was convicted of conveying a prohibited article into prison.
Mr Justice Openshaw said at her appeal against sentence that Hamza could have used the SIM card to ‘convey messages of support to his followers outside, or use
‘No one to care for her son’
it to encourage or incite the commission of further offences’.
Under current immigration laws, Britain automatically serves a deportation order against all non-EU offenders who are sentenced to more than one year in prison, irrespective of their family circumstances.
After completing her sentence, CS was given a deportation notice in 2013. But she appealed, claiming she could not be expelled because there would be no one else to care for the boy.
She won that case when immigration judges ruled that deportation amounted to ‘constructive expulsion’ of her son from Europe – a breach of EU rules.
Mrs May appealed against that decision and the case was sent by the British courts for a ruling from the Luxembourg court, where it currently remains.