A 20-year-old Croatian national has appeared in court for the knife murder of 17-year-old Jodie Chesney in Romford, London.
Manuel Petrovic, who appeared in Barkingside Magistrates’ Court in a grey tracksuit, was remanded in custody after being charged with one count of murder, according to ITV News. His lawyer, Zahir Ahmed, did not attempt to lodge a bail application.
The Croatian’s suspected role in the teenage Explorer Scout’s killing is yet to be disclosed, but the Metropolitan Police say another male is also in their custody on suspicion of murder while the investigation continues.
The victim, whose father her described as a “proud geek” and said “the fibre of her being was just about being good, kind”, was stabbed in the back for seemingly no reason at a public park while out with a group of friends, including her boyfriend.
As the European Union’s most recent member-state, Croatia does not have an automatic right to Free Movement migration rights — but, despite the British people’s vote to Leave the European Union in June 2016, and the option of extending transition controls on Croatian migrants until 2020 being available, the British government decided to open its borders to the Balkan country in June 2018 anyway.
Theresa May has agreed to allow any EU migrant who has arrived in the United Kingdom since the Brexit vote, and any EU migrant who arrives in the so-called “transition” period in her proposed (but not yet agreed) deal with the bloc, to acquire “settled status” and stay forever, if they so choose.
The Free Movement regime does not allow intra-EU migration to be limited in any meaningful way, or even effectively vetted.
Judges rarely allow national governments to deport EU migrants for any reason, quashing attempts to throw out even serious criminals like convicted rapist and drunk driver Mircea Gheorghiu, who the Government were ordered to bring back from Romania after a court decided he did not meet the legal threshold for deporting an EU citizen as “a genuine, present and sufficiently serious threat to one of the fundamental interests of society.”