A Bangladeshi sex offender branded a ‘dangerous sexual predator’ by the High Court was allowed to stay in Britain after the asylum court ruled he didn’t pose a threat to the public.
The asylum seeker carried out a ‘violent’ sexual assault on a young woman who was found crying and with ripped clothing having been attacked by him, an immigration court was told.
The man in his late 20s – described as ‘unremorseful and unreformed’ – is also strongly suspected of carrying out a string of other sex attacks on strangers.
And in 2023 the asylum seeker – who was granted anonymity – was also jailed for three years for being part of two major class A drugs gangs.
The Home Office tried to deport him following his drugs conviction but he appealed the decision.
In August 2024 the First-tier Tribunal of the Immigration and Asylum Chamber allowed him to stay in the UK on international protection and human rights grounds.
A judge concluded he had ‘rebutted the presumption he is a danger to the community of the UK’.
Now, however, the Upper Tribunal has ruled that the judge made mistakes in their decision by failing to conduct a proper risk assessment and has ordered that the case be re-heard.
Judge Paul Lodato, sitting in the Upper Tribunal (pictured), said the First-tier Tribunal judge’s ruling that the asylum seeker did not pose a threat to the public was flawed
The Upper Tribunal was told that the Bangladeshi sexually assaulted the stranger in 2015 when he was aged 17, but sought to resist deportation on the grounds that he no longer poses a sufficient risk to the community.
Details were shared about the attack in 2015 on the Isle of Dogs in East London in the tribunal’s judgement.
“The police were called by a third party as he had found a female who was half naked and stating that somebody had tried to rape her”, the judgment said.
“When police arrived they found the victim sitting on the floor near Mudchute Docklands Light Railway station.
“She was crying and visibly shaken. Her top appeared to be ripped and she was holding her bra up with her hands.
“The victim stated to the officer that the suspect had approached her nearby stating he was going to look after her as she was drunk.
The judgment added that he told the woman he would walk her to a bus stop but instead took her into a park where he pushed her to the ground, pulled off her bra and sexually assaulted the woman.
He was given an 18-month detention and training order.
The asylum seeker sexually assaulted a stranger near Mudchute DLR station (above) in 2015 when he was aged 17, but sought to resist deportation on the grounds that he no longer poses a sufficient risk to the community
There were a spate of other attacks that the Met Police suspected him of being involved in, he has not, however been convicted of any of them.
In 2019, the High Court said he remained a ‘danger’ during a judicial review. The Bangladeshi had by this stage launched an asylum claim.
In 2023 the Bangladeshi was jailed for three years ‘for his role in conspiring to supply significant quantities of class A drugs as part of an organised criminal enterprise’.
It was heard that the First-tier Tribunal in 2024 had to rule whether he posed a ‘danger to the community of the UK’ as part of his asylum appeal.
The judge at the hearing relied on evidence from an expert who ‘overlooked’ important details about his offending and stated: ‘I am satisfied he has rebutted the presumption he is a danger to the community of the UK’.
At the latest hearing, Upper Tribunal Judge Paul Lodato found that last year’s decision was flawed.
Judge Lodato said: the risk assessment which underpinned the finding ‘involved errors of law.”
The judge added: “We are bound to conclude that the judge fell into legal error in her assessment of (the expert’s) evidence.
“There are palpable indications that (the expert) overlooked important parts of the overall evidential landscape before he came to the conclusion that the (Bangladeshi) presented only a low risk of reoffending.’
The expert ‘failed to see signs of (the Bangladeshi) downplaying his culpability for his offending’, the judge said, ‘and initially failed to apply his mind to a deeply concerning sequence of sexual attacks on female strangers’ around the time of the 2015 attack.
The judge said there were reasonable grounds to suspect the asylum seeker had committed some of the ‘non-conviction offences’.
Judge Lodato added: ‘Not only did the judge who considered the risk posed by the (Bangladeshi) in 2024 fail to refer to these manifest gaps of reasoning in the expert’s opinion evidence on which she relied so heavily, there was a yet further and more recent indication that (he) was not at all remorseful about his sexual offending in 2015.”
Judge Lodato said the First-tier Tribunal judge failed to appreciate the fact that in 2019 judicial findings showed the abuser was a ‘dangerous sexual predator who was neither remorseful nor reformed’.
The Bangladeshi’s case will be re-heard at the First-tier Tribunal at a later date.
