Ruling: High Court Judge Martin McKenna has ruled in favour of the Home Office and dismissed an asylum seeker’s compensation claim – but it has emerged the career criminal cannot be deported

An Algerian asylum seeker with 14 convictions for 17 crimes can’t be deported because no other country will have him, the High Court heard.

The 31-year-old career criminal poses a ‘high risk of harm to the public’ and has committed ‘numerous criminal offences’ including violent and drug crime.

He arrived in the UK from Africa in 2003 and has been convicted of 17 offences over a seven-year period.

The Algerian has brought a compensation claim against the Government claiming he has been unlawfully held in a detention centre.

High Court Judge Martin McKenna has ruled in favour of the Home Office and dismissed the man’s claim.

But he has been released from immigration detention after deportation attempts failed.

Judge McKenna said the man, who has a history of alcoholism, drug use and homelessness and cannot be named, had been born in a refugee camp in southern Algeria, claimed that he was ‘stateless’.

He said Home Office staff had approached authorities in different parts of Africa – in a bid to deport – but officials abroad had refused to provide travel documents to the man.

The judge said in his ruling: ‘The claimant entered the United Kingdom in 2003. He claimed asylum in June 2003.

‘In 2005 the claimant began to develop a mental health disorder. He has been treated as an inpatient in hospital since that time both on a voluntary and involuntary basis under mental health legislation.