Violent asylum seeker jailed THREE times as he battled for ten years against deportation is awarded £4,000 compensation because he was 'unlawfully' held under curfew after he was released from jail

• Thierno lbrahima Jollah jailed for child cruelty and threatening court witnesses
• He arrived in the UK in January 2003 and was granted exceptional leave to stay
• Lawyers for the 30-year-old had tried to argue that he was entitled to £35,000

An asylum seeker who was jailed for three years for a string of offences has been awarded £4,000 compensation for time he was waiting to be deported.  

Thierno lbrahima Jollah was jailed for assault, child cruelty and threatening court witnesses.  

Lawyers for the 30-year-old had argued during a three day hearing in the High Court last month that he was entitled to £35,000. 

Today, one of the country's top judges, Mr Justice Lewis, agreed Jollah was entitled to compensation and awarded him £4,000 instead of the larger pay-out he attempted to claim.

The award comes in the wake of a string of hearings since 2006 before immigration tribunals, the county court and the High Court and criminal courts.

The judge said Jollah arrived in the UK in January 2003 seeking asylum and was granted exceptional leave to stay. His judgment revealed that he has remained in the country ever since.

In May 2006 he was convicted at Cambridge Crown Court of threatening to harm a witness, juror or person assisting in investigation of an offence of common assault and was jailed for 15 months.

And in September 2006 he was convicted of assault occasioning actual bodily harm and sentenced to a further six months.

The deportation moves dragged on and he remained in the UK and was jailed for a further year in 2013 for child cruelty.

Under powers that entitle the Government to deport foreign criminals he was served with notice of deportation as long ago as May 2007 in respect of the earlier offences and was detained pending the outcome. 

However, in January 2008 he was granted bail on condition he report to the authorities regularly but by June 2008 his challenges to deportation had failed.

He then failed to comply with his bail conditions, was arrested as an 'absconder' served with a deportation order and put in detention. But because of complications with the deportation order he was freed again in July 2009.

By 2013 when he had been freed from the child cruelty sentence it emerged that he might be from Guinea rather than Liberia and that he may also have a different name to Jollah.

Because of fears by the authorities that he could abscond, he was released from a detention centre but put under a strict curfew and electronically tagged.

But it has since emerged the regulations used by a Home Office worker to impose the curfew were wrongly applied. 

He was under curfew from 11.00 pm to 7.00 am for two and a half years which amounted to 'unlawful detention.'

The curfew was finally lifted by a High Court judge last year.

Mr Justice Lewis said Jollah was entitled to compensation for the time he was under the curfew but not entitled to aggravated damages on top of that.

He said that the curfew had continued for 'a significant period of time', adding: 'The law requires the payment of compensation for the injury suffered as the result of the imposition of the unlawful curfew.

 That amounts, in the present case, to £4,000.'