Deported Albanian sneaks back into Britain – and ECHR rules he can stay

The use of Article 8 rights has been criticized for more than a decade for preventing deportations like that of Learco Chindamo, the murderer of school principal Philip Lawrence, to Italy.

When Home Secretary Theresa May claimed the meaning of Article 8 had been distorted by the courts, she cited the case of an illegal immigrant who could not be deported because he had a pet cat. The justices then disputed their interpretation of the case.

Binaj entered the UK illegally in a truck in 2014 before being arrested for burglary the following year. He was sentenced to 30 months in prison in 2016 for the burglary, plus six months in prison for another burglary and 18 weeks for another theft.

The judge at Binaj’s first appeal hearing said the Albanian claimed he had requested an early release from prison so he could return to his home country to his grandmother, who was very ill and later died. However, this claim was not accepted by the judge. Instead, she believed he had returned to Albania “to avoid serving his prison sentence.”

Lawyers point to the wife’s state of health

He re-entered the UK in January 2017, just five months after his deportation, but the documents do not show how.

Binah deliberately waited until the birth of his son in September 2020 before applying for UK residency under the EU settlement scheme “as he believed this would increase his chances of remaining in the UK”, he said Judge.

A month later he married Diana Bolgova, his girlfriend and mother of his son. But his application for residency was rejected and in February 2023 the Interior Ministry again applied for his deportation.

Binaj then claimed that the removal would violate his right to family life under Article 8. His lawyers argued that his wife was suffering from severe anxiety and “depressive symptoms” after recently learning that her mother had died a violent death when Ms. Bolgova was 11.

The court was told his wife’s problems had been exacerbated by her grandmother’s illness, her aunt’s husband’s suicide and concerns about their son’s health.

The judge acknowledged that being separated from Binaj would be “unduly harsh” for her and her son and that she might not be able to receive appropriate medical treatment in Albania.

The fact that Binaj was also working illegally in the UK was not, in his view, seen as undermining his claim. As a result, the judge granted the appeal in March this year on the grounds that deportation would violate his Article 8 rights.

Mr Cleverly, then interior minister, challenged this ruling on the grounds that it was not “unduly harsh” to send Binaj back to Albania and that there was a strong public interest in deporting a convicted criminal. But the judge’s decision was upheld by a top immigration court.