A Jamaican man may face persecution if he returns to his home country, a tribunal has ruled, according to British media
A convicted criminal, whose defense was that he did not know having sex with a sleeping woman constitutes rape, cannot be deported from the UK to Jamaica, a court in the UK has ruled, because he is bisexual, British media report.
An upper tribunal last year sided with the Jamaican male, identified only as AA, who pleaded that he could face persecution in his home country over his sexual orientation, several British news outlets reported on Monday.
The man had been sentenced to seven years in prison back in 2018 over forcing himself on a sleeping female after a party at which alcohol and marijuana was being consumed. During the trial, part of his defense was that he did not think that he had been committing a crime.
The 41-year-old was released in June 2021 after serving half of his term. But the Home Office in London deemed the man a “danger to the community” and launched a bid to send him back to Jamaica.
However, the convicted rapist challenged the plan to deport him, telling a tribunal in 2023 that he’d been in a sexual relationship with an older man when he was a teenager in Jamaica. According to AA, that man had been murdered, while he himself had been “repeatedly violently attacked in Jamaica, leading to multiple scars on his head and body including from a metal bar, a machete and attacks by dogs.”
The initial tribunal blocked the man’s deportation, with upper tribunal judge Melissa Canavan upholding the original ruling last year. She argued that “in light of the strong evidence relating to the embedded nature of anti-gay and LGBTQI+ attitudes in Jamaica,” it was “reasonably likely” that AA “would face similar treatment” as he’d previously experienced in his home country.
The Home Office reacted to media reports about the case, saying that it makes “no apology for wanting to remove foreign national offenders at the earliest opportunity.” The agency stressed that it is working “to ensure there is no barrier to deport foreign criminals as it is in the public interest for these people to be removed swiftly.”
“This man should be thrown out of the country,” former British security minister John Hayes told the Sun, describing the decision by the tribunal as “an insult to every victim.”
