Unlawful detention

Muuse v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2010] EWCA Civ 453, TLR 10 May

The claimant was a Dutch national born in Somalia who had been unlawfully detained for 128 days on the orders of English immigration officials pending deportation to Somalia or Holland in circumstances where there was no right to deport. Almost nothing had been done to verify the claimant’s claims that he was Dutch, even though that could simply have been done by checking his property. Letters from his solicitors to the Prison Service and to the Immigration Directorate went unanswered and even when the claimant’s nationality became known to those officials, it was a month before he was released.