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Asylum Seeker arrested and facing deportation as Home Office accuse him of “sham marriage”.

Asylum Seeker Justice Charles and his British wife Ruby are in absolute
despair since Justice’s arrest this morning. The Home Office have
accused him of being in a “sham marriage” to Ruby Senior, who he met in
2003 and married in 2008 and are saying he must leave his wife want to
deport him to Sierra Leone.

Green Councillor Jillian Creasy has
commented on his on-line petition “As a local councillor I can vouch for
Justice and his  genuine and supportive relationship with his wife,
Ruby. It would be a travesty for him to be deported.”

MP Paul Bloomfield has written to the Home Office supporting Justice’s claim for leave to remain in this country.

Local vicar Julian Sullivan has written an open reference, saying that he is convinced the marriage is genuine.

Justice
Charles was attacked by rebels whilst delivering food aid with the UN
in his home country of Sierra Leone in 1999. Injuries sustained in these
attacks have been confirmed in medical reports. Justice continued to be
threatened by former rebels following the ending of the country’s
ten-year civil war in 2001 and fled to the UK the following year to
claim asylum. Since 2003 Justice has been in a relationship with British
woman, Ruby Senior.

Ruby has five children and two grandchildren
from a previous relationship and suffers from lupus, rheumatism,
arthritis, high blood pressure, depression and anxiety. She says that
Justice ‘looks after my children like they are his own’ and that ‘I have
never been happier since I met him. My life has changed and my
happiness has come back. I cannot afford to miss or lose my husband
because that would break our family apart.’ Dr Lisa Dunkley, Consultant
Physician in Rheumatology, has written a letter to state her concern
about the severe effect the threatened deportation is having on Ruby’s
health. This has been particularly bad since she found him collapsed on
the bathroom floor after an attempted overdose when he heard, in May,
that his permission to appeal against the decision to deport him had
been turned down.

Despite the Coalition Government’s support for
‘strong and stable families of all kinds,’ the Home Office claims that
Ruby and Justice have only a ‘Marriage of Convenience’. The genuine
nature of the relationship over many years is affirmed by local City
Councillors and others including the Anglican Canon, Julian
Sullivan,from St Mary’s Bramall Lane, who had to ensure that all
qualifying conditions were met before allowing the marriage to take
place in his church. As a former Asylum Seeker Justice has no right to
work and no recourse to public funds, yet he has actually saved the
Government money because of the reduced financial support that Ruby gets
because he is there to care for her.

You can support Justice’s campaign to stay here with his wife by signing the on-line petition at http://www.gopetition.com/petition/38780.html

Topics: Asylum Seekers, Central, City Wide, Graham Wroe, International, Refugees, Rob Unwin

There are 3 Responses to Asylum Seeker arrested and facing deportation as Home Office accuse him of “sham marriage”.

11th August 2011

Justice’s petition has been signed by Caroline Lucas MP.

    19th September 2011

    Any chance of helping the people of Sheffield who have lived here for generations ?

19th September 2011

2 points Jane. Justice has lived here nine years, Ruby has lived here all her life. They are the people of Sheffield!
Secondly if you read some of the other posts on this website you will see that the Greens are supporting all sorts of ordinary Sheffielders, from students to pensioners. However if you are aware of situations of injustice in Sheffield that we are not tackling, do tell us about them.