An asylum seeker who was jailed as a “danger to the UK” after attacking four strangers is using a legal loophole to claim he is a reformed character and should not be deported.
Rebin Tofiq Hamaamin was drunk when he “meted out serious violence” by kicking and punching a man unconscious and then beating two others to the ground in a South Yorkshire town, an immigration judgment reveals.
The 31-year-old Iraqi, who arrived in Britain on a small boat, then “spoke inappropriately” to a young woman in Barnsley before attacking her boyfriend as he went to her aid.
Although Hamaamin was due to be deported once released from his two-year prison sentence, a “material error of law” has meant his immigration case will have to be heard again.
He was previously denied asylum because it was ruled he was not at risk of persecution in Iraqi Kurdistan. His legal team successfully appealed against that deportation order. Lawyers for Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary, then proved an “error in law” meant the legal process had to start again.
Rebin Tofiq Hamaamin and another man beat up strangers in a night of drunken violence in Barnsley town centre – travellinglight/Alamy
In arguing his right to stay in Britain, Hamaamin will be able to use human rights laws to argue he is a “reformed character and no longer poses a danger” to the public.
Following a hearing at the Upper Tribunal Immigration and Asylum Chamber, a judge has published a 29-page ruling that explains how Hamaamin crossed the English Channel from France in 2020.
Within two years, he was charged with affray and assault occasioning actual bodily harm following an evening of violence. He was charged along with Safa Khalid, a 27-year-old man understood to be a fellow migrant.
Her Honour Judge Sarah Wright, sitting at Sheffield Crown Court, jailed Hamaamin, then living in Grimsby, for two years after he pleaded guilty to the offences.
She explained how “when in drink .. you meted out serious violence in Barnsley town centre to three people” before “inappropriately speaking to a young woman who was at work … meting out violence to her boyfriend … hitting him in the face and kicking him repeatedly as he was on the floor, after he tried to calm you down, leaving him with injuries to his face”.
Sentencing the pair in November 2022, she said: “I have come to the conclusion that you each present a risk to the public, particularly when under the influence of alcohol, and that appropriate punishment can only be achieved by immediate custody.”
Inconsistencies in his account
A month after he was jailed, a deportation order was approved because his application to remain in the UK on human rights grounds had been rejected.
He had claimed that if he was sent back to Iraqi Kurdistan he would be killed. He said he had fled the country after a vehicle he was a passenger in had been driven at speed into two armed security officers who opened fire killing the driver. Hamaamin said he fled on foot, but the security forces and the driver’s family and tribe were hunting him.
He told UK immigration officials that he believed he had been delivering fruit and vegetables, but discovered the driver – his “business partner” – was really armed and smuggling drugs.
His asylum application was rejected because it was not believed he was at risk of persecution and there were inconsistencies in his account of the car ramming.
Begin the process again
Hamaamin and his legal team successfully overturned that deportation order at appeal.
Ms Mahmood then challenged that ruling due to a “material error in law”.
The latest judgment has paved the way for Hamaamin to use the courts to begin the process again, as well as challenge the minister’s claims that he is “a serious criminal and … danger to the community of the UK” and so should be “excluded from humanitarian protection”.
The judgment adds that Hamaamin is entitled to “rebut” the criminal judge’s claims about his violent past and argue how he was now “a reformed character and no longer posed a danger”.
A Home Office spokesman said: “We will not allow foreign criminals and illegal migrants to exploit our laws. We are reforming human rights laws and replacing the broken appeals system so we can scale up deportations.
“All foreign national offenders who receive a prison sentence in the UK are referred for deportation at the earliest opportunity.”