STRIPPING serious criminals of their British citizenship with no advance notice is “unfair”, soft-touch judges have ruled – in a move that could open the gates to an avalanche of appeals by killers, rapists and gangsters.
The little-known Home Office tactic prevented serious crooks with two passports from renouncing their foreign citizenship, rendering them stateless, which is illegal under international law.
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But the Court of Appeal said the method, brought in after shameless Rochdale rape gang brutes chucked out their Pakistani passports to scupper deportations, did not give a fair chance to defend themselves from being booted out.
The decision allowed “senior and controlling” Albanian crime boss Gjelosh Kolicaj, 42, to stay in the UK on human rights grounds.
The brazen money launderer claimed the then Home Secretary Priti Patel mistreated him by only giving 30 minutes’ notice when he was deprived of a British passport in 2021.
Kolicaj was jailed for six years in 2018 for smuggling £8million of cash in suitcases from the UK to Albania.
National Crime Agency chiefs, who snared Kolicaj in a sting operation, warned he would still pose a threat to Britain after release.
An internal Home Office assessment added: “It is considered that depriving Kolicaj of his British citizenship would be conducive to the public good because it would contribute to preventing and deterring further criminality, in particular from the organised crime group of which he held a senior and controlling role.”
Kolicaj was told on the 22nd of January, 2021 that his passport status was “under review”.
Only 30 minutes later, he was informed a deprivation order had been made.
In the letter, Ms Patel, now shadow foreign secretary, wrote: “The offences you have been convicted of are of a very serious nature and contained an element of organisation, involving collusion with others.
“I am satisfied your offending is rightly justified as participation in serious organised crime.”
The dad-of-four claimed he been denied a fair opportunity to challenge the order, made under Section 40(2) of the 1981 British Nationality Act.
The law allows the Home Secretary to unilaterally remove a dual national’s British passport if it would not leave them stateless.
It was most famously used to remove Isis bride Shamima Begum’s British citizenship in 2019.
Kolicaj claimed the lack of time to respond violated his human rights.
A soft-touch judge agreed the crook was treated unfairly.
Lord Justice Edis decided: “Mr Kolicaj has been deprived of his citizenship without at any stage being able to advance reasons why that should not happen.”
But the judge shockingly declined to tell the Home Office how the system could be made “fair” on foreign criminals.
He went on: “The notice and the Deprivation Order was issued and maintained in a way which was procedurally unfair and must be quashed.
”It is not for the court to devise a procedure which would satisfy procedural fairness.”
And he directly accused Ms Patel of “overriding the obligations of fairness in the interest of expediency.”
The decision could pave the way for hundreds of other foreign criminals stripped of their British citizenship to also claim they weren’t warned far enough in advance.
At least two Rochdale groomers renounced their Pakistani citizenship after being told their British passports were under review.
Qari Abdul Rauf and Adil Khan used the ploy in a bid to halt their deportations. Both still live in Rochdale more than a decade on from being jailed.
Kolicaj gained dual UK-Albanian nationality after marrying a British woman in 2009, but left her shortly after for another Albanian woman.
He shares two children with his second wife but kept his British passport from his first marriage.
Shortly after obtaining citizenship, Kolicaj is thought to have started using the new passport to load suitcases packed with wads of cash onto planes.
He and brother Jak ran a four-strong team that made 80 trips in two years from Stansted Airport to nations around Europe packing huge amounts of notes.
The cash would then be taken by land back to their native Albania.
They were caught in a National Crime Agency sting after cops busted two bags bound for Greece.
One held £180,000 in cash, and the other had £100,000.
Kolicaj had previously won a human rights hearing by relying on the hated ECHR Article 8 clause guaranteeing a private and family life.
A Home Office spokesman said: “Foreign nationals who commit crime should be in no doubt that we will do everything to make sure they are not free on Britain’s streets, including removal from the UK at the earliest possible opportunity.
“We remain resolute in our commitment to ensuring there are no barriers to deport foreign criminals, as it is in the public interest for these people to be removed swiftly.”
