Not sure why the url has suddenly stopped working... here's the article and you can also google it..
It was apparently a "sickening day for justice" and David Cameron was furious. An Iraqi Kurd whose initial claim for asylum in the UK had been turned down was allowed to stay because immigration judges in Manchester ruled that, as he had a British wife and two children, it would not be right to deport him and destroy that family. But 33-year-old Aso Mohammed Ibrahim is not the average asylum case: he had been convicted of a string of motoring offences, including failing to stop after an accident in which his car hit and killed a 12-year-old girl.
Amy Houston was hit by Ibrahim's car in November 2003. She died six hours later in hospital after her family had to take the decision to turn off her life support systems. Ibrahim, who was not charged with causing the accident, had already been banned from driving and was convicted of fleeing the scene and driving while disqualified. But although he served a four-month prison sentence, there were no moves by the authorities at the time to have him removed from the UK. (He had arrived here in the back of a lorry in 2001, on the run from Saddam Hussein's atrocities against the Kurds.)
During last week's hearing it was revealed by the immigration judge that if there had been such a move it is likely Ibrahim would now be back in Iraq. But no such steps were taken, allowing him the time to settle here, marry and father a boy and a girl of his own, as well as becoming stepfather to two more children.
Thursday's judgment by the immigration tribunal became the focus of an immediate furore over the human rights act. The prime minister raged against it, stating, "We have an Iraqi asylum seeker who has killed a child and there is no way he can be sent back." Cameron continued that he "very much hoped the UK Border Agency would be able to appeal against the decision", and he was angry that "this was allowed to happen". He was also embarrassed by having made not only a pre-election pledge to scrap the act, but had also written personally and at some length to Amy Houston's grieving father, Paul. The Tory leader has been a frequent critic of the act, which was introduced by Labour in 1998 to bring European standards of human rights into domestic law so that they could be applied without the expense of constantly going to the Strasbourg Court of Human Rights for decisions.
In January, he wrote to Mr Houston, 41, expressing sympathy over Amy's death and tying the case to Conservative policy to abolish the act. But since coming to power in May, he has had to quietly shelve those plans on the advice of legal experts, including the attorney general, Dominic Grieve. Many experts point out that no judge can be prevented from taking the circumstances of any individual into account. "It's unlikely that any judge, when a criminal has been convicted of a crime and served that punishment, is going to be open to coming in with a second punishment of deportation," one lawyer told the Observer.
Amy's father, who wrote to the tribunal asking for Ibrahim to be deported, called Thursday's decision a perversity and said it showed the human rights act favoured criminals' rights over those of their victims. But the act does allow for judges to make up their own minds. The much-maligned Article 8 does allow someone to be deported if they pose a risk to society, although the consequences of removal on the family of the offender is taken into account.
In this case they took into account the fact that Ibrahim had been jailed and, while the Home Office had argued that Ibrahim brought his misfortunes upon himself – which is undoubtedly true – it is not only Ibrahim's rights which have to be considered, but also those of the children.
