Why can't we name this rapist asylum seeker?

On the surface, it’s the kind of everyday tale of human rights lunacy to which we’ve become almost inured.

An Iranian man illegally entered the UK 11 years ago and his asylum request was rejected three months later. He appealed and that, too, was rejected. But he just stayed on.

In September 2009 he was convicted of rape and jailed for five years. Still no attempt to remove him, despite his clear danger to the public.

 He went on to father a child, was in prison again when the baby was born and separated from its mother shortly afterwards. And still he remained in Britain.

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The High Court overruled Theresa May (pictured) and said the violent criminal, who illegally entered the UK before being convicted of rape and jailed, should be handed travel expenses so he can visit his family

Now a High Court judge has ruled that, under Article 8 of the Human Rights Convention, we must pay his fortnightly travel costs to visit his child, as refusing to do so is a breach of his ‘right to a family life’.

This, of course, in addition to the tens of thousands of pounds he has cost us in legal fees.

But this case raises even more troubling questions.

 An estimated three million more migrants will reach the EU by the end of next year. Of the 750,000 who have arrived so far this year, half a million have claimed asylum.

And while the numbers are smaller for the UK, there is no doubt that many among this tide of desperation will end up here. It’s a mass migration on an unprecedented scale and cases like the Iranian rapist sap the very compassion out of the British people.

For I fear it is the most deserving and desperate asylum seekers who will suffer the inevitable backlash as pressure on housing and public services mounts.

And if we can’t even remove a rapist who has twice had his claim for asylum rejected, what hope is there?

Cases like this shake our confidence in a system that is clearly failing.

Look at the figures. Of the 314,000 asylum seekers whose applications were rejected in the seven years up to 2004, only 75,000 were removed.

Home Secretary Theresa May is making heroic strides trying to tighten the system, but is thwarted at every turn by the courts and the Human Rights Act, something David Cameron vowed to replace.

Perhaps most worrying of all is that we are not even allowed to know the Iranian rapist’s name. In court he was referred to as MG, no doubt to protect him and his child.

What about the protection of the British public? Isn’t the whole point of the sex offenders’ register that we should be allowed to know the identity of the monsters in our midst?

Terrifyingly, he is just one of the 400 foreign murderers, rapists and paedophiles to successfully challenge their deportation orders in the past 12 months on human rights grounds. 

To cap it all, he is challenging his asylum claim rejection for a third time.

It’s enough to make you want to leave the country.