Deportees taken off flight after human rights appeals

TWO-THIRDS of 50 foreign criminals due to be deported to Jamaica have had to be removed from the flight after lastminute legal appeals by human rights lawyers.

Sixteen, including a convicted murderer and a child rapist, were still earmarked for deportation last night after lawyers for more than 30 successfully appealed against their removal. All 50 had received prison sentences of more than a year with offences including one convicted of murder, another of attempted murder, a third for rape of a girl under 16, a fourth for multiple rapes of adults and a fifth for child rape.

Others have served jail terms for grievous bodily harm or assault, possession of a deadly weapon, causing serious injury by dangerous driving, drugs offences including dealing heroin, and sex offences. However, campaigners, lawyers and Labour MPS called for the flight, which was due to leave at 1am today, to be halted on humanitarian grounds. They claimed most of the 50 were guilty of non-violent or drugsrelated offences or one-off convictions.

Lawyers for at least 10 of the 16 were still fighting their removal last night on grounds including breach of their human rights. A similar deportation flight last December to Jamaica for 50 criminals only took off with 13 after similar legal appeals. Diane Abbott, the former shadow home secretary, claimed such deportation flights were a populist strategy by the Prime Minister to demonstrate his toughness on immigration.

“Mass deportation flights are a signature Boris Johnson immigration and nationality tactic. They are cruel, arbitrary, a double punishment and expensive,” she said.

Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, aims to prevent last-minute legal appeals with a shake-up of the “broken” asylum system that would force those facing deportation to submit all their claims in one go at the start of the process. Three of the deportees were named last night. Akeem Finlay, 31, is being deported as a risk to the public after being jailed for six years in a 2014 conviction for grievous bodily harm with intent.

Damion Thompson, 42, was jailed in 2011 for two years for possession of a class A drug and £2,000 in stolen cash, and Sanjay Mclean, 41, was imprisoned for 18 months in 2014 for assault causing actual bodily harm to his then partner.