LONDON: An Iranian asylum seeker jailed on smuggling charges for helping to direct a vessel carrying migrants across the English Channel has been cleared of all charges at a retrial after spending 17 months in jail.
Fouad Kakaei, 31, was rescued by British border enforcement officials in July 2019 while crossing to the UK from France in a crowded dinghy with several others.
He was then deported to Denmark before making his way back to the French coast and making a second crossing attempt in December that year.
He was sentenced to two years and two months in jail in January 2021 after admitting to British authorities that he had actively commandeered the vessel because he “didn’t want to die at sea.” The court of appeal overturned his verdict in March.
In March Boris Johnson said that the government would “ruthlessly stiffen the sentences for anybody who is involved in this kind of people smuggling and trafficking human beings across the Channel”.
The CPS has faced criticism over previous decisions to prosecute migrants caught helping to steer boats from France to England, with charities saying the decisions could be linked to political pressure.
Kakaei’s lawyer, Aneurin Brewer of Red Lion Chambers, told the Guardian that this case could lead to other migrants currently serving jail sentences being freed.
“The critical point is that the individuals on the boat were intending to be rescued at sea and were not planning to disembark and enter illegally. That means there was no breach of immigration law.
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Brexiteer politicians – including those who hold high office – have elevated Brexit to the high principle of national sovereignty. Freed from the shackles of the treaties of Maastricht and Lisbon, and the architecture of the EU, Brexiteers trumpet supposedly regained sovereignty as only cause for celebration.
This book includes discussion of United Nations, African, American and European treaty-based human rights instruments which prohibit the use of torture – and the mechanisms for the enforcement of these treaty obligations. They are a reminder that constraints on national sovereignty are not necessarily the work of the wicked and that virtue is not always on the side of unlimited national sovereignty.
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