- Joachim Cardos was offered cash as an incentive to board a plane to Gambia
- Illegal immigrant and rapist appealed deportation on human rights grounds
A foreign rapist who was dubbed a ‘danger to women’ was offered £1,250 from the taxpayer to leave Britain.
Joachim Cardos, 43, was offered the cash by the government to board a flight to Gambia.
It was part of a scheme to encourage foreign criminals to leave rather than launch expensive legal bids to stay in the UK.
A newly published judgement revealed the offer came after Home Secretary Suella Braverman lost an appeal against a ruling that Cados can temporarily remain in the country.
Cardos was an illegal immigrant in Edinburgh and dealing drugs when he raped a woman at knifepoint and left her fearing for her life.
He received eight years for the rape and three more for supplying drugs.
After serving a jail sentence for what a judge described as a ‘violent and persistent’ attack that had a ‘devastating’ impact on his victim, he was ordered to be sent back to his native Gambia.
Despite the law stating that foreign nationals guilty of serious crimes should automatically be deported, the sex offender launched a human rights challenge – arguing that his health would suffer in his West African homeland.
In a move that justice campaigners have called ‘an insult to his victim’, an immigration tribunal ruled in favour of letting Cardos remain in the UK.
Cados showed no remorse for his crime and a court in Edinburgh was told that no prisoner transfer deal existed between the UK and Gambia, meaning he would have to serve his time at HMP Dumfries.
He was also diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and spent some time in hospital.
In 2019, he was transferred to an immigration centre and given a deportation order.
But he successfully appealed on the grounds that as well as his human rights being breached, his medical condition wouldn’t be given proper treatment.
The Home Office offered to fund his treatment in Africa and also £1,250, but it was turned down.
Tribunal judges said there was a ‘real risk that he will experience genuine difficulties in the Gambia in being able to access a regular supply of his necessary medications’, adding: ‘There is a real risk of at least social isolation and stigmatisation.’
Cardos arrived in Britain in June 2007 on a visitor visa. When his leave to remain expired in June 2008, he stayed on illegally, living in Edinburgh and dealing drugs.
In October 2011, a 26-year-old marketing executive who had got his phone number outside a nightclub went to his flat in the capital’s Dalry area to buy a small quantity of cannabis.
When he tried to kiss her, she turned him down but he pushed her into the bedroom.
The woman later told a trial at the High Court in Edinburgh: ‘I could just see his eyes widen and his nose flare.
It just looked like an angry face. He said he was going to kill me. He said to me, ‘Do you know how many people I have killed?’
Cardos grabbed her throat and she briefly passed out. When she came to, she found he was not in the room, but he returned.
She said: ‘This time he had a knife. He kept saying I was bad and he was going to kill me. I thought he had flipped or was on drugs or something.’ Cardos then raped her.
Passing sentence in July 2012, Judge Lord Hardie said there was a high risk of re-offending and Cardos posed a danger to women.
