An illegal immigrant who committed a series of crimes including theft and drug possession has been awarded $49,000 in damages because he was “detained for too long” while awaiting deportation.
Hassan Massoum Ravandy, 46, from Iran, lived in Britain illegally for 15 years. He received his publicly-funded £40,000 payout after a judge ruled it was unlawful to have locked him up for 17 months. Judge Heather Baucher said the cash was an ‘appropriate award’.
Ravandy arrived in the UK in the back of a lorry in the year 2000, Central London County Court was told.
He said he was unable to return to Iran because he feared being persecuted but his asylum claim was rejected after he was found to have lied about his brother’s death at the hands of Islamist group Hezbollah. Instead, it is thought he fled Iran after becoming involved in illegal currency trading.
A deportation order was issued in 2002 but Ravandy remained in the UK for the next 15 years, according to the Mail on Sunday. During that time he committed crimes including handling stolen goods, criminal damage, burglary, shoplifting and possession of cocaine.
He was taken into custody and the Home Office tried to deport him because his presence in the UK was ‘not conducive to the public good’ .
However, he refused to return to Iran and bureaucratic complications in Tehran further hindered the process.
Lawyers conceded he was unlawfully held for 512 days between March 2014 and August 2015. Foreign criminals in Britain were given a total of £4million ($4.9million) in compensation last year after claiming they had been unlawfully detained or locked up for too long.
They included a Somali sex offender and a Sudanese national, Jumaa Kater Saleh, who lured schoolgirls into a house for sex.
It is not known if Ravandy has been deported to Iran or is still in the UK.
