A migrant who fought deportation by arguing his son disliked foreign chicken nuggets has won the right to stay in Britain.
The case of convict Klevis Disha, 39 – who entered Britain illegally under a false name and lied in a failed asylum claim – sparked outrage when it emerged a year ago.
Critics cited it as a stark example of abuse of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Home Office talked tough, pressing to have him expelled – which should have been a formality as he was jailed for two years in 2017.
But despite the outcry he has won his appeal against removal.
His barrister Richard McKee successfully argued it would be ‘unduly harsh’ for his son, 11, to have to join his father in Albania, or be left in Britain without him.
Disha was 15 in 2001 when he ‘entered the UK illegally as an unaccompanied minor’, judges were told.
Two days later he made an asylum claim on the basis of political persecution. He stated, falsely, that he had been born in the former Yugoslavia in 1986. It also appears he gave a false name.
Disha’s asylum claim was refused nine months later with ‘the Home Secretary not being satisfied he had a well-founded fear of persecution’.
The case of convict Klevis Disha, 39 – who entered Britain illegally under a false name and lied in a failed asylum claim – sparked outrage when it emerged a year ago
He appealed, his case dragged on for four years and, in September 2005, he was granted ‘Indefinite Leave to Remain’.
He met his Albanian-born girlfriend the next year, and they had a daughter and a son.
In September 2017, Disha was given a two-year jail sentence after being caught with £250,000 in cash, determined to be the proceeds of crime when he could not account for its origins. The sentence of more than a year meant he should be deported.
In 2019, after just nine months inside, he was told he was to be stripped of UK citizenship.
His appeal was only heard in June 2024 when Judge Behan ruled the crook should not be deported ‘on human rights grounds’.
The Home Office appealed and a tribunal overturned the ruling, noting of his son, ‘C’: ‘We can only see in the decision a single example of why “C” could not go to Albania: “C” will not eat the type of chicken nuggets available abroad.’
A series of hearings dragged on for more than a year and Judge Veloso has now ruled in Disha’s favour, under Article 8 of the Human Rights Act, noting ‘C’ ‘struggles with certain textures of foods’ and ‘has a limited diet’.
The judge dismissed Home Office claims that ‘C’ spoke Albanian as a first language, and does not have a formal autism diagnosis, saying: ‘Disha’s deportation would be unduly harsh for “C”.’
Last year, Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said: ‘Bogus asylum seekers are exploiting human rights laws and weak judges.’
The Home Office insisted that it was doing everything it could to deport foreign criminals.
