A United Kingdom appeal court has ordered the deportation of a Nigerian man convicted of multiple attempted rapes after years of legal disputes that delayed his removal from the country on human rights grounds.
The man, identified in court documents only as OSB, had remained in Britain for almost a decade after the Home Office first issued a deportation order against him in 2017.
Court findings showed that OSB, who was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, repeatedly challenged deportation efforts by arguing that returning him to Nigeria could expose him to inhuman or degrading treatment because of concerns surrounding his mental health care and the possibility of imprisonment if he relapsed.
However, the Court of Appeal ruled that earlier immigration tribunal decisions blocking his deportation relied on “impermissibly speculative” assumptions about what could happen to him after removal from Britain, according to Mail Online.
Delivering the judgment, Lord Justice Bean held that British authorities could not reasonably be held responsible for a chain of hypothetical future events, including the possibility that OSB might stop taking medication, commit new offences and eventually end up in prison without psychiatric treatment.
