A drug dealer who dodged deportation from Britain to the Netherlands using a Brexit technicality and human rights laws had received jail sentences totalling more than 11 years, it can be revealed.
Dutch national Adnan Jama – who is allowed to stay in the UK after a Home Office appeal failed – was most recently sent to prison in September 2021.
Last night, Tory MP Philip Davies called for reform of the Human Rights Act, saying he ‘can’t understand’ how it has been used to allow a ‘serious, persistent, foreign national criminal’ to avoid removal.
In his court appearance two years ago, Jama, now 28, was jailed by a judge at Sheffield Crown Court for five years and seven months after admitting dealing heroin and crack cocaine in the city.
Just three years earlier, in 2018, he was jailed for four years and one month at the same court, having pleaded guilty to possession with intent to supply Class A drugs and possession of criminal property.
Dutch national Adnan Jama is allowed to stay in the UK after a Home Office appeal failed and was most recently sent to prison in September 2021
Jama received a 21-month jail term suspended for two years for possession of heroin and crack cocaine with intent to supply at Sheffield Crown Court (pictured)
And in 2017, he received a 21-month jail term, suspended for two years, also at Sheffield Crown Court, for possession of heroin and crack cocaine with intent to supply. His sentences total 11 years and five months.
Conservative MP Mr Davies said: ‘The law passed by Parliament is that foreign nationals sentenced to at least one year’s imprisonment should be deported.
‘I can’t understand why the human rights of a serious, persistent, foreign national criminal take priority over the human rights of decent, British, law-abiding people.’
The Government wanted to deport Jama, who came to Britain aged six, at the end of his sentence – but he appealed, initially to a first-tier immigration tribunal.
Jama claimed forcing him to leave the UK would breach ‘retained free movement rights’ as a citizen of the European Economic Area, because part of the charges against him related to drugs he acquired before the Brexit deadline of 11pm on December 31, 2020.
He also claimed it would ‘amount to a breach of his rights’ to private and family life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The Government has not said whether it intends to make a further challenge to the Court of Appeal.