Author: David Barrett, Home Affairs Correspondent
Publication: The Telegraph
Date: January 23, 2011
URL: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/7060947/Killer-cant-be-deported-because-he-might-kill-again.html
An Iraqi immigrant who stabbed two doctors
to death has won the right to stay in Britain after a judge ruled that he
would pose a danger to the public in his homeland.
An immigration tribunal decided that Laith
Alani, a paranoid schizophrenic, should not be deported to Iraq because it
would breach his human rights and put people there at risk.
Alani has spent the past 19 years in a secure
hospital after he killed two NHS consultants in a frenzied attack because
he believed he had received a "command from Allah".
The Home Office wanted to deport him on his
release to protect the British public, but he appealed to the Asylum and Immigration
Tribunal (AIT) where a panel led by Lance Waumsley, a senior immigration judge,
ruled that he could remain in the UK.
The widows of the two doctors, who were not
informed of the killer's legal victory or the plans to release him back into
society until they were contacted by The Sunday Telegraph, expressed their
shock at the decision.
One of the reasons given by the judges is
that if Alani was sent back to Iraq he would be unlikely to receive medicine
which keeps his paranoid schizophrenic under control.
They said in their judgement: "If his
present treatment ... were to be discontinued, as would most likely be the
case if he were to be removed to Iraq, the potential consequences would be
extremely serious for (Alani) himself, and potentially life-threatening for
innocent third parties around him in the event of his likely, indeed almost
inevitable, relapse into a state of paranoid schizophrenia."
Alani, now 41, has been receiving the drug
clozapine on the NHS for 10 years, and the AIT was told it was the only medication
found suitable to treat his mental condition.
The judgement, which was delivered in October
but has only just been revealed, also states that deportation would breach
the killer's right to a private and family life because he moved to the UK
with his parents as a child.
Alani killed Michael Masser and Kenneth Paton,
both consultant cosmetic surgeons, at Pinderfields Hospital, Wakefield, West
Yorkshire, in November 1990.
Mr Paton's widow, Dorothy, who still lives
at the home she shared with him in Ossett, near Wakefield, said last night
of Alani: "I think he should be deported. I argued that at the time of
the trial.
"I think he is going to be a danger
to people in Britain. He is a dangerous man."
Dr Jasmina Masser, who like her late husband
specialises in plastic surgery, said: "I am very shocked by this news.
I was once very hurt by these events."
The case comes after The Sunday Telegraph
revealed how the AIT regularly overturns attempts by the Home Office to deport
foreign criminals at the end of their sentences.
Last year this newspaper disclosed how dangerous
offenders from overseas, including killers and paedophiles, had used the Human
Rights Act to avoid deportation despite a pledge by Gordon Brown, the Prime
Minister, to remove any foreigner who breaks the law.
Mr Brown said in 2007 that foreigners must
"play by the rules or face the consequences", adding: "If you
commit a crime you will be deported from our country."
Alani had come into contact with the two
doctors after being referred to their clinic for removal of a tattoo from
his arm - a picture of an eagle above the words "Republic of Iraq"
- because he claimed the adornment was against his religion.
He became concerned about how long he would
have to wait for the procedure, and even tried to remove the tattoo himself
by scraping his arm with a knife.
Mr Masser, 42, was stabbed six times in the
throat and chest with a sheath knife. His widow gave birth to son Harry six
weeks before Alani's trial; the couple already had a seven-year-old daughter.
Mr Paton, who was 56, and married with three
grown-up children, suffered 24 stab wounds in the chest and abdomen.
The surgeons' bodies were discovered by Mr
Paton's secretary, Pamela Mackay, when blood was seen coming from underneath
the door of a consulting room.
After his arrest, Alani told detectives:
"It was a command from Allah. I have had visions from Allah and you can't
be more right than Allah."
He told police he believed one of the doctors
was Satan and one was Lucifer, and said he had added their names to a death
list which also included James Whale, the broadcaster, who had earlier 'cut
off' Alani during a radio phone-in during which he expressed anti-Semitic
views.
At his trial at Leeds Crown Court in 1991,
Alani, who was unemployed and living in Wakefield at the time of the crimes,
admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. He was
sent to Rampton maximum security hospital indefinitely.
But he was transferred to a smaller "regional
secure unit" in 2005.
The AIT said that in 2008, as part of his
"staged preparation for his intended release into normal society",
Alani was moved again, this time to a 12-bed residential care home which operates
as a "therapeutic community" for people with mental health problems.
He could be set free next year.
