Labour are searching for a deal with another nation state which would see the UK government avoid having to grant asylum to a sex offender jailed on the Chagos Islands.
The Rwanda-style scheme would see the 34-year-old Sri Lankan national sent to a third country after Labour refused him entry to the UK.
This decision was made due to a combination of the potential risk the man poses to the public and worries that his admittance could undermine public confidence in the government’s immigration policies.
Unable to return to his homeland after allegedly being tortured by the country’s military, the man is currently serving a six-month sentence for assault and sexual attacks in Diego Garcia.
A high court judge has now backed the Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s stance on denying the man asylum after he appealed her initial decision.
Mr Justice Chamberlain ruled it lawful for the Foreign Office to seek an alternative country willing to permit the sex offender entry.
As the Chagos Islands are not under the jurisdiction of the European Convention on Human Rights or the Refugee Convention, the asylum seeker was unable to use them to aid his appeal against Ms Cooper’s decision.
At present, the Foreign Office is in discussion with five states over the possibility of them taking in the Tamil man, with only one nation so far rejecting Labour’s plan, according to the Telegraph.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer are searching for a way to avoid granting asylum to a sex offender jailed on the Chagos Islands
The man is currently serving a six-month jail term on the island for assault and sex attacks
The government is searching for a Rwanda-style deal in which the man would be granted entry by another nation as part of a broader deal with the UK
The man, who has not been named, also suffers from mental health issues and has previously attempted self-harm and suicide.
The sex offender was previously part of a group of over 60 Sri Lankans who fled their country on a fishing vessel back in 2021, with the UK accepting 61 of these asylum seekers last November despite having initially searched for an alternative nation to take them.
However, the man was not part of this deal given his 24-week sentence for assault causing bodily harm and his receiving of a 20-month suspended sentence for four offences of sexual assaults on a woman.
During the man’s appeal to the UK high court, the government stated that granting him entry would create an ‘inevitable risk’ to public safety and that public confidence would be ‘undermined’.
Mr Justice Chamberlain accepted that the Tamil man had never had any legal right to enter the UK and that the risks to public safety and confidence in the immigration system were ‘real’.
When issuing his judgement, Mr Justice Chamberlain declared: ‘So is the risk that admitting the claimant in these high-profile circumstances, would tend to undermine the UK’s international commitment to tackling violence against women and girls.
‘The task of evaluating the weight and importance of avoiding these risks falls, in the first instance, to ministers, not judges. Given the nature of the risks in question, the court should allow a wide margin to the democratically accountable ministers who, together with their officials, performed it’.
Agreeing that the government would face ‘considerable difficulties’ in finding an alternative nation willing to accept the man given his previous offences, Mr Justice Chamberlain said that there was a chance another state would ‘oblige’ the UK if ‘through the diplomatic channels’, an agreement could be reached in which they received something in return.
Ministers have already negotiated with Mauritian authorities to close loopholes which could see the Chagos Islands become a back door route into the UK, with any further migrants arriving on the islands set to be taken in by Mauritius before being sent to St Helena, a British territory in the Atlantic.
The MailOnline has contacted the Foreign Office for comment.
