London: Dozens of MPs have backed calls to halt the deportation of a severely autistic man who was jailed as a teenager after being found guilty of stealing a mobile phone. The cross-party group of 55 MPs have signed an early day motion calling for the Home Office to suspend plan to report 21-year-old Osime Brown to Jamaica, a country which he has not set foot in since he was four. The motion, sponsored by six Liberal Democrat, SNP, and Labour politicians, “notes Osime’s mother’s words that if they deport him, he’ll die” and raises concern about his conviction and about self-harm inflicted while behind bars. Brown, a Jamaican-born UK resident, was served with a removal notice by the governmentrin August 2018 on the basis of a series of criminal offences he committed as a teenager. The most serious was the theft of a mobile phone, but lawyers have expressed concern over the role of the controversial joint enterprise law in the case and a friend of Brown has testified that he was not directly involved the crime. More than 100,000 people have signed a petition to calling for Brown’s deportation to be stopped and some supporters have staged a protest outside the Home Office.
Read more: Bethany Dawson, Indpendent, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/mp-deportation-osime-brown-home-office-b1761585.html
