Refugees know once they are in, they are free to do whatever they want and nothing can stop them from being provided for.
Deporting Somalian refugee Mohyadin Mohamed Farah, a serial sex offender pictured here being sentenced in the Wellington High Court in 2006 after repeated sexual assault convictions, is proving to be a headache for the legal system.
Family of refugee judged a ‘danger’ to women struggle to get him deported
The courts have reached a stalemate over what to do with a “dangerous” serial sex offender and refugee who cannot yet be sent back to his home country – even though his own mother and lawyer want him to go.
Instead a judge has ordered Mohyadin Mohamed Farah to be detained as a “special patient” so the Government has time to decide what to do with the “troubled” refugee declared a risk to women.
Farah was declared unfit to stand trial for raping and assaulting a woman but was back in Wellington District Court on Thursday after the struggle to decide what to do with him hit a wall.
Farah arrived a Somalian refugee in New Zealand in 2001.
His had served time in Kenyan jail and had offended here by 2002.
A judge told Farah in 2006 his stalking, kissing and groping strangers – thinking women owed him sexual favours – needed to stop, remarking: “You are proving to be a menace to the country which has given you refuge.”
On September 11, 2013 , Farah allegedly demanded sex from his victim and when she struggled to get free, raped her.
“You are a risk to women and they need to be protected from your sexual advances,” Judge Ian Mill said on Thursday.
A deportation order was issued in 2008, but with no government set up in war-torn Somalia to receive him or issue him with a passport, his family’s plea to have him returned home has reached an impasse, the court heard.
Farah told the court through his interpreter he would prefer to go back to the forensic mental health ward.
However his lawyer and his mother both told the court they wanted him sent back to Somalia.
However his lawyer and his mother both told the court they wanted him sent back to Somalia.
“They would like to return him to Somalia and care for him. In that cultural context his risk would be reduced, they think,” Farah’s lawyer Chris Nicholls said.
He agreed his client was “dangerous”, but said the process to deport him was at a standstill.
Wellington District Court Judge Ian Mill declined to make an order for compulsory treatment, as that would likely result in him being released back into the community eventually.
Mill ordered instead to have him detained in a secure psychiatric setting as a “special patient” – someone declared mentally unfit to stand trial.
kept on detention in a secure hospital setting, for half the time of the maximum penalty for the crime they committed. eyond that they can be detained indefinitely.
Farah would be eligible to spend up to 10 years as a special patient.
There was no government authority currently able to receive Farah in Somalia, therefore the decision over removing his refugee status and deporting him was a government one, Mill said.
“He has to be securely contained until he leaves the country,” Mill said. “It’s going to be far better for everyone including him and the community if he’s surrounded by a set of values and culture that he understands and I would do that myself, but I can’t.”
Psychiatrists were in disagreement over whether or not Farah had an intellectual disability as he had suffered severe head injuries in a shipwreck.
His family had noticed he was different as a child, but after the shipwreck, he began to demonstrate abnormal sexual and psychotic behaviour, Mill said.
Refugees could leave New Zealand voluntarily, but deportion could not happen until special patient detention ended, an Immigration NZ spokesperson said.
Immigration could not legally deport a refugee. A refugee officer could cancel their status if the person proved a danger to national security or committed a particularly serious crime.
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