A Ugandan killer who was jailed for life after he brutally murdered man in the back of an ambulance will not be deported after judge ruled it would be a breach of his human rights.
The man, known only as ZM as he was granted anonymity, was a member of a North London gang who chased their victim, Eugen Breahna, into the back of an ambulance wielding baseball bats and golf clubs and clubbed him to death.
ZM, who was 18 at the time of the murder and is now 37, was jailed for life in 2006, with the judge ordering that he should serve a minimum term of 16 years in prison.
The Home Office sought to have him deported to Uganda on his release form but were blocked by a first tier immigration judge.
ZM’s lawyers successfully argued that it would be ‘inhumane’ to deport him to Uganda because the country does not have the facilities required to treat his mental health conditions.
The court was told that the killer had a psychiatric disorder which caused him to suffer a ‘pervasive distrust and suspiciousness’ which made him preoccupied with grievances and grudges against those he believed had harmed him.
Lawyers argued that being deported to Uganda would be a ‘traumatic event’ that could cause his mental condition to deteriorate and that living in an ‘alien world’ in Uganda, with no friends and separated from his mother who lives in the UK, would add to his ‘suspiciousness’.
The court accepted that there would be a ‘serious, rapid and irreversible decline’ in his mental health if he were to be deported and that this would be a breach of his article three rights under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) which protects individuals against inhumane and degrading treatment or torture.
Christopher John Hanson, the senior immigration judge, said he was ‘satisfied’ that the necessary treatment for ZM’s condition was ‘either not available or not accessible’ to him in Uganda.
He said: ‘I find that if [ZM] was removed to Uganda there would be serious, rapid and irreversible decline in their state of health resulting in intense suffering or significant reduction in life expectancy.’
He added: ‘All of those factors lead me to conclude that there is a real risk of ill-treatment, capable of breaching [ZM’s] Article 3 rights, in the context of reception procedures in Uganda.’
Rejecting the Home Office appeal, Judge Hanson said the first-tier judge ‘has not been shown to have materially erred in law’ which would mean ZM would be allowed to stay in the UK.
ZM’s battle legal battle against his deportation is one of 27,000 appeals currently waiting to be heards before the courts.
The backlog – as of March this year – shows that in appeals have nearly quadrupled since March 2023 when there were just 7,500.
The Refugee Council has predicted that appeals are expected to increase sharply, many of which will be challenging their deportation on human rights grounds.