Home Office offer foreign rapist taxpayer-funded £1,250 to leave Britain
A FOREIGN rapist was offered a taxpayer-funded £1,250 to quit Britain.
The Home Office pledged the handout to Joachim Cardos if he boarded a flight home to the Gambia.
The sweetener was part of a Government scheme to encourage foreign criminals to leave rather than launch expensive legal bids to stay here.
The offer emerged in a newly-published judgment after Home Secretary Suella Braverman lost an appeal against a ruling that Cardos can temporarily remain in the UK.
In 2011, illegal immigrant Cardos, 43, was convicted of a raping a woman at knifepoint.
A court heard he left his victim, a marketing worker, fearing for her life in a “violent and persistent” attack.
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He received eight years for the rape and three more for supplying drugs.
Cardos, who showed no remorse, had initially come here on a valid six-month visa before unlawfully staying.
A court in Edinburgh was told no prisoner transfer deal existed between the UK and The Gambia so Cardos would have to serve his sentence at HMP Dumfries.
He served some time in hospital after being diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.
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In 2019, after being transferred to an immigration centre, he was given a deportation order by the Home Office.
But Cardos successfully appealed, saying deportation could breach his human rights as his medical condition needs proper treatment.
The Home Office offered to fund treatment in The Gambia, as well as £1,250. It was turned down.