An illegal Somali migrant and her husband were spared prison because the judge had to consider their human rights and said they were “decent and law-abiding people”.
Barwaaqo Ahmed and her husband Saeed Osman Hersi, both 43, faced custodial sentences for Ahmed’s illegal entry into the United Kingdom.
But Judge Patricia Lynch, QC, gave the pair nine-month prison sentences suspended for a year, rationalising that “exceptional circumstances” were required “when we are dealing with otherwise perfectly decent and law-abiding people who have proved themselves to be hard workers and good citizens”, reports The Times.
Ms. Ahmed, who speaks no English, admitted that she entered the country illegally in April 2016 using someone else’s passport. Mr. Hersi, who arrived in the UK in 1990 and gained citizenship in 2000, also pleaded guilty to helping his wife enter the country under false pretences at Chelmsford Crown Court.
Judge Lynch said that though “it is so serious to enter this country with false documents”, the case itself was not “exceptional” and she had to consider their human rights and family circumstances.
“I have to take into account, as I am entitled to, the [human rights] article which looks after [the right] to family life,” she said.
The couple has an eight-month-old daughter, born in the UK, and two older children who arrived in May 2017 and have since gained British citizenship.
In June, Breitbart London reported that Lord Justice Philip Sales ruled it would “not be fair” to deport a paedophile refugee, despite the judge acknowledging he faced no threat of persecution in his native Zimbabwe.
Following the terror attacks in Spain last week, Spanish media reports suggested that Abdelbaki Es Satty, the imam thought to have acted as the Barcelona terror attack’s mastermind, should have been deported from Spain in 2014 after completing a prison sentence — but judges said this would have breached his human rights.
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