- Aliou Bah, 28, from Guinea, has twice been convicted and jailed for sex assaults
- Refugee was then kept in prison for 21 months after serving his sentences
- Home Office battled to deport him to Guinea – but country refused to take him
- No-one has been successfully deported to the West African state since 2006
- Judge rules he’s owed compensation because he unlikely to be deported
- Do you know Aliou Bah? Email [email protected]
A migrant jailed twice for sex attacks has won £110,000 compensation for being locked up too long – after his own country refused to take him back.
The judge who awarded the money admitted he ‘wholeheartedly’ agreed that many would think it was the victims of 28-year-old Aliou Bah who deserved large payouts instead.
Bah, from Guinea, had been imprisoned twice for serious assaults – including an attack on a 16-year-old girl – and placed on the sex offenders’ register.
But in a ruling revealed yesterday, a court decided that the Government had held him unlawfully for 21 months when there was no reasonable prospect of deporting him to West Africa.
Moves to throw him out were blocked by immigration officials in his homeland who refused to process his travel documents.
Another obstacle to deportation was that Bah had been granted permission to stay in Britain as a refugee.
Judge Nicholas Madge ruled the sex attacker must receive damages – but said he ‘wholeheartedly’ agreed that people would believe Bah’s victims deserved payouts rather than him. The judge said that he had been forced to uphold the principle that no one should be imprisoned unlawfully in a civilised society.
The case sparked fresh demands for ministers to make it harder for foreign criminals to block moves to remove them from Britain.
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H/t reader kevin a.