A jailed Albanian people smuggler was allowed to remain in the UK after a judge ruled that he had become a “valuable member of society” despite having no “objective” evidence to justify his verdict. The Telegraph has the story.
Kristjan Agolli, 36, was jailed for three years and three months in 2023 for his key role in a people smuggling operation that brought Albanians into the UK to work on illegal cannabis farms in converted homes or unused industrial buildings.
He was served with a deportation order by the Home Office, but he appealed on the basis that it would breach his right to a family life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
His appeal was backed by a lower immigration tribunal judge, who ruled that it would be “unduly harsh” on his wife, who was Romanian, had never lived in Albania and could not speak the language.
The lower-tier judge based his decision solely on assurances by Agolli and his wife that he would not reoffend even though there was no evidence, either in probation reports or attendance at rehabilitation courses, to support their claims.
He concluded: “[Agolli] poses a low risk of reoffending and has not reoffended since his release from prison and has become a valuable member of society.”
The Home Office appealed the judgment and in a damning reassessment of the lower court’s verdict, an upper tribunal judge said it was “plainly wrong and rationally unsustainable” as well as “contrary to the weight of evidence”.
The case has now been sent back to the first-tier tribunal to be reconsidered on the basis that the original decision “erred in relying exclusively upon [Agolli’s] personal evidence and that of his wife, when finding as a fact that he has been rehabilitated”, according to the upper tribunal judge.
“There was no evidence of rehabilitative work undertaken by the claimant, either in his own evidence or in additional documents.
“Reliance on the protective factors of his family and wife was also over-optimistic: these same factors were available to the claimant at the time of the commission of his offending, and one of those whose clandestine entry he sought to facilitate was a family member.
“The first-tier judge’s reasons are inadequate and circular: they take no account of the public interest in deportation of foreign criminals nor of the absence of any evidence of rehabilitation beyond the assertion by the claimant and his wife.” …
The case, disclosed in court papers, is the latest example exposed by the Telegraph in which illegal migrants or convicted foreign criminals have used human rights laws in an attempt to remain in the UK or halt their deportations.
They include an Albanian criminal who avoided deportation after claiming his son had an aversion to foreign chicken nuggets, and a Pakistani paedophile who was jailed for child sex offences but escaped removal from the UK as it would be “unduly harsh” on his children.
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