Double murderer can head for UK after Home Office blunder

A murderer from Bangladesh will be allowed to come to live in Britain on human-rights grounds after a legal error by the Home Office.  Theresa May, the Home Secretary, was on Saturday under pressure to explain how the man – known only as “ZR” – had been allowed to win a legal challenge because of a paperwork error by her department.  ZR is now due to enter Britain because the Home Office submitted court papers too late.  He was convicted of murdering two people in Bangladesh in 1990 and jailed for life.

The killer was released in 1997 due to a “general amnesty for good behaviour”, according to papers in his immigration case.

He married a British woman in March 1998, and they had three children, all born in Britain.  It is understood that in 2011, ZR, a 45-year-old shopkeeper, applied to the Home Office to come and join his family. His application was refused because the admission of a double murderer to Britain was “not in the public interest”.

ZR launched an appeal, and Judge John Blair-Gould in the lower immigration tribunal allowed his claim under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects the “right to private and family life”. Home Office lawyers failed to lodge an appeal in time, meaning the earlier decision to allow ZR’s appeal remains in force. The details of his crimes remain a mystery. Mr Justice McCloskey, the president of the Upper Tribunal, refused a request by The Telegraph to release further information about ZR. The tribunal has also imposed a lifelong anonymity order on the killer, so he cannot be identified.

The Home Office refused to provide details of ZR’s offences, but confirmed that the Government had “exhausted all avenues of appeal”, meaning officials must now issue the murderer with a visa to travel to Britain.

Dominic Raab, the Conservative MP who is campaigning to reform human rights laws, said: “It is a damning indictment of Labour’s Human Rights Act that a double murderer can claim a right to family life to skip past UK border controls designed to protect the public, and gain entry to Britain. Article 8 claims are making Britain a safe haven for the most dangerous foreign criminals.”

A judge eventually granted the Home Office permission to appeal against the initial ruling, but that decision was challenged by ZR’s lawyers. There followed various delays, and varying accounts of the procedure, which Judge Peter King in the Upper Tribunal said were “difficult if not impossible to reconcile”. The ruling said a crucial factor in the case was ZR’s children, now aged between six and 15.

Describing the first tribunal decision, the court papers said: “Because of their British nationality it was the finding of the judge… that there was now no question of the claimant’s wife and children living with the appellant in Bangladesh.”

It went on: “The judge recognised that normally international criminals should be excluded from the United Kingdom but came to the conclusion that in the light of all the circumstances, the continued exclusion of him could no longer be justified.”

Judge King concluded that the “public interest” in keeping a double murderer out of the UK was not the most important factor.

“There seems to be an expectation that the public interest on the merits trumps everything else. It seems to me that that is not necessarily the case and is certainly not the case here,” he said.

A Home Office spokesman said: “We will continue to challenge appeals from convicted serious criminals looking for settlement in the UK. This ruling was made before new measures included in the Immigration Act came into force.  They mean that in future the courts will be required to have regard to Parliament’s view of the public interest in immigration cases citing Article 8, making clear the right to a family life is not to be regarded as absolute and unqualified.”

Tommy Monk wrote:Mistake or not, should still not be allowed here.

Raggamuffin wrote:If they forgot to lodge an appeal, surely they can forget to give him a visa.