All Articles: Criminal offences

In a previous briefing we saw that customary international law, four international conventions and international human rights law all impose a duty on states to rescue those in distress at sea and to set up and maintain search and rescue services. We ...

Part 3 of the Nationality and Borders Bill 2021 includes provisions relating to immigration offences and enforcement. It criminalises arriving in the UK, as well as formally entering, making it almost impossible to claim asylum in the UK without first ...

“Illegal immigration to be turned into a criminal offence in landmark borders bill”, the Sunday Express reports. The idea that unauthorised immigration is insufficiently criminalised will surprise legislators who have spent much of the pas ...

The scenes in Glasgow last week, which saw a crowd prevent Immigration Enforcement from making off with two Indian men, got us thinking about the criminal offence of obstructing an immigration officer. Not, we hasten to add, because we think anyone sh ...

On 13 May 2021, my client Fouad Kakaei was unanimously acquitted of assisting unlawful immigration at his retrial following a successful appeal against conviction, the reporting restriction for which will now be lifted. The appeal and subsequent acqui ...

Fouad Kakaei is an Iranian man who helped steer small boats carrying asylum seekers across the English Channel on two separate occasions, in July and December 2019. He also attempted to cross on several other occasions. Following the July 2019 crossin ...

In recent years the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) has displayed a willingness to allow late appeals and quash historic convictions to address injustice against victims of human trafficking. This includes using the common law to protect the right ...

In Idahosa v R [2019] EWCA Crim 1953 the Court of Appeal has ruled that an asylum seeker who had stopped over in the United Kingdom for 54 days en route to Canada can rely on the exception to false documents offences available to refugees. The court t ...

O v R [2019] EWCA Crim 1389 is the latest of a series of appeals brought by victims of trafficking against historic convictions. In this case the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) decided to quash a 2008 conviction because the prosecution had not ev ...

The Court of Appeal has given judgment in two linked cases involving victims of trafficking prosecuted in the UK for offences linked to their trafficking: N v R [2019] EWCA Crim 752. In one of the cases, involving a young Vietnamese man prosecuted fo ...

MK and Gega v R [2018] EWCA Crim 667 is about who should face the burden of proof when a criminal defendant relies on the new “victim of slavery/trafficking” defence in the Modern Slavery Act 2015. In the first appellate judgment on this issue, th ...

Shortly after Christmas in 2009, a young woman from Somalia flew into Stanstead and claimed asylum. She had just turned 18. As later accepted by the Home Office, she had experienced severe depredations in her home country. This included her rape at th ...

The Home Office has imposed fines on small businesses for employing illegal workers of over £14 million in just a three month period. The period covered is January to March 2016. The list of businesses targeted by officials appears to include mainly ...

In yet another example of a refugee who was not properly advised on his defence to a prosecution for illegal entry, Shabani, Re [2015] EWCA Crim 1924 (22 July 2015), the Lord Chief Justice has overturned the conviction but this time has also referred ...

In a very interesting judgment the Canadian Supreme Court has declared unconstitutional the criminal offence of organising, inducing, aiding or abetting undocumented entry. The case is R. v. Appulonappa – SCC Cases (Lexus). This post reviews th ...

In the absence of legal means by which to enter countries of sanctuary, refugees resort to the use of irregular means of entry. Some will falsely apply for and obtain a visit or student visa and then apply for asylum once within the UK. Others will u ...

Omenma (Conditional discharge – not a conviction of an offence) [2014] UKUT 314 (IAC) is an interesting case for two reasons. Firstly, the Home Office accepted that the decision was wrong and withdrew it. Nevertheless, because the case had reac ...

In another highly critical report on immigration enforcement by the Home Office, the Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration John Vine has found that in nearly two thirds of cases (59%) immigration enforcement officers entering business premises l ...

Immigration Minister Mark Harper has resigned from the Government because in 2007 he employed a cleaner who did not have permission to work. Harper claims that he has not broken the law but is resigning because “I should hold myself to a higher ...

In R (on the application of P (DRC) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2013] EWHC 3879 (Admin), handed down on 9 December 2013, Mr Justice Philips held that P would be at risk of treatment in breach of Article 3 of the ECHR if deported to t ...

Child abduction is a criminal offence. It requires covert departure from the UK to another country, and from the abductor’s point of view preferably one that is not in Europe, not a signatory to the Hague Convention and that does not have a bila ...

Refugees fleeing persecution in their home country cannot afford to be scrupulous about the means by which they reach sanctuary in another country. This truism was recognised by the drafters of the Refugee Convention: Article 31 affords refugees prote ...

Finally, there has been a breakthrough in cases where victims of trafficking find themselves prosecuted and convicted here in the UK for engaging in the very activity into which the victim was forced. It may seem strange that it is the victims of traf ...

Recently the Law Society Gazette ran an article by Yewa Holiday, a barrister and a case review manager at the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), which highlighted the plight of asylum seekers and refugees wrongly convicted after being advised t ...