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GBR | Mar 20, 2023

British murder convict suing Home Office after deportation to Jamaica

/ Our Today

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A British man convicted of murder is suing the Home Office, claiming he was wrongly deported to Jamaica.

Richard Wallace, whose parents migrated to Britain as part of the Windrush generation in the 1950s, was born in Paddington, London in 1969.

In 1998 the 29-year-old was convicted of murdering a man working at a takeaway in south London.

After serving his sentence, Wallace says he was incorrectly classified as Jamaican in a case of mistaken identity and deported to Jamaica in 2015. He returned to the UK on his British passport in 2018.

However, on his return to Britain, Wallace was accused of using his own passport fraudulently and was jailed for two years before being released in October 2020 after DNA tests with other British members of his family proved him to be a match.

Claims of ‘institutional racism

Wallace told the Guardian that the treatment meted out to him by the authorities in Britain had left him “completely broken”, expressing the belief that, as a black man, he was a victim of “institutional racism”.

Wallace’s solicitor, Naga Kandiah, is suing the Home Office and other government bodies saying: “Serious maladministration and incompetence led to a British citizen being deported under a different name and falsely imprisoned. He has suffered huge injustice and hardship over many years.”

Wallace spent his early years in the UK with his father, a carpenter and religious minister, and his mother, an NHS nurse.

When he was convicted of murder, a tariff of 20 years was set by the home secretary but this was later reduced by a year by a judge who said he had made “exceptional” progress in prison.

Turning around his life

Along with many educational qualifications including an Open University degree, Wallace also worked as a peer tutor, intervened to prevent another prisoner from taking his own life and did charity work.

Wallace told the Guardian he believed he ended up being wrongly deported to Jamaica because officials confused him with somebody else. The Home Office, when contacted by the Guardian, declined to comment on this claim.

Having been deported to Jamaica, Wallace said he struggled to survive, managing to make a living by cooking food in a shop, and for much of his time in Jamaica slept rough on the floor of the shop.

“All of this has been so traumatic for me. The authorities wore me down and they broke me. I don’t believe this injustice would have happened to me if I was white.”

Richard Wallace

Wallace is trying to rebuild his life in the UK and has set up a catering business specialising in North African and Caribbean food called Richphire Etrez.

He also mentors young people at risk of getting involved with knife crime in south London.

“All of this has been so traumatic for me. The authorities wore me down and they broke me. I don’t believe this injustice would have happened to me if I was white. They would have said: ‘he’s one of ours’. I’ve experienced institutional racism throughout. One prison officer called me a ‘monkey’ but when I complained nothing was done,” Wallace said.

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