High Court Judge Nicholas Madge has now ruled that Aliou Bah was kept in prison for 21 months longer than he should have been and is due £110,000 in compensation
A West African refugee jailed twice for sex attacks has won £110,000 compensation after he was kept in prison too long after his home country refused to take him back.
Aliou Bah, 28, from Guinea, has twice been convicted and jailed for sex assaults, including one on a 16-year-old girl.
But he was kept in prison after serving his sentences whilst the Home Office battled in vain to deport him to his West African homeland.
High Court Judge Nicholas Madge has now ruled that, after a series of Home Office blunders, Bah was kept in prison for 21 months longer than he should have been.
Many would say that it is the victims of sexual abuse who should be paid large sums in compensation, not the men who sexually abuse them, the judge said.
He agreed wholeheartedly with that but, making the £110,000 award, he added that, as a judge, it was his job to uphold the law.
As Bah had refugee status, he should never have been held in custody after his sentences expired, the judge ruled.
And, as the Guinea Embassy had refused to issue him with travel documents, there was never any prospect of deporting him anyway, he added.
Bah, who arrived in the UK in 2007 to join his refugee father, was convicted of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl in February 2011.
He was jailed for 18 months and put on the sex offenders’ register for 10 years. But he was jailed again, for two years, for another sexual assault in 2014.
The Guinea Embassy had refused to issue him with travel documents and has not taken anyone back from the UK since 2006, the High Court heard
The Home Secretary signed a deportation order against him in December 2011, without anyone realising that he was entitled to be treated as a refugee.
And he was held in prison for 14 months between January 2012 and March 2013, pending a deportation that could never have happened.
He was held again, this time for seven months, between October 2014 and June 2015, again unlawfully.
Given his refugee status and the attitude of the Guinea Embassy, there was no prospect of him being thrown out of the country, said the judge.
The Guinea authorities have consistently refused to issue travel papers to anyone who does not want to return to the country voluntarily.
Bah had not volunteered to go home and the judge said that no-one had been successfully deported to the West African state since 2006.
Both periods of immigration detention were therefore necessarily unlawful, the judge ruled.
Making the award, the judge said there were few more important principles in a civilized society than that noone must be locked up without lawful authority.
Bah was entitled to justice, like anyone else, and it was the role of independent judges to hold the government to account.
He had served his punishments for his crimes and was only due compensation because of the Home Office’s failure to properly apply its own policy.
Judge Madge concluded that, had Home Office officials behaved in a competent manner, the need to award Bah damages would not have arisen.