An illegal immigrant who stabbed a 15-year-old boy to death less than a year after arriving in Britain cannot be deported because he claims to be gay, a court has ruled

The 29-year-old Jamaican was given a life sentence at the age of 16 when he and another schoolboy killed Abdul Maye following an argument over a £10 debt outside his school in east London. A judge at the Old Bailey ordered that he be deported once he had served a minimum of eight years. Judge Paul Focke told the man, who cannot be named for legal reasons: "You are a Jamaican national and within months of coming to this country you committed murder. I am of the view that your continued presence in this country will be detrimental to its citizens." But now the Court of Appeal has ruled that he could not return to Jamaica because he risked degrading treatment for being homosexual which would breach his human rights. Lord Justice Kay cited Article Three in the Human Rights Act, which protects against inhuman or degrading treatment. Douglas Carswell, Tory MP for Clacton, said: "Most people would think this is outrageous. It’s a gross distortion of the concept of justice. Until we have freed ourselves from the European Convention on Human Rights, these sorts of basket-case decisions will carry on happening thick and fast." The murderer stabbed his victim, who fled to Britain from the civil war in Somalia in 1995, less than 12 months after arriving in Britain in December 2000 on a temporary visa to visit his mother. He and another 14-year-old boy were jailed for life in September 2002 and told to serve a minimum of eight years and two months. But this was reduced on appeal to six years and two months. In 2009, the Secretary of State ordered his deportation but after one failed appeal, the Jamaican launched a second appeal in April 1012, arguing for the first time that he was gay. The Jamaican successfully appealed the deportation decision another two times before Lord Justice Kay said that he believed the evidence of the man's mother, who said that she "knew all along" that her son was gay.