LEARCE CHINDAMO

LEARCE CHINDAMO, THE MURDERER OF TEACHER PHILIP LAWRENCE

Learco Chindamo, currently serving life, has won his appeal at the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal to stay in Britain.

The Government says it is "disappointed" that it cannot deport the killer of headteacher Philip Lawrence. He was 15 years old when Mr Lawrence was stabbed to death in an attack outside St George's Roman Catholic School in Maida Vale, west London in December 1995. Mr Lawrence had been protecting a pupil. Lawyers for Italian-born Chindamo, now 26, argued that deporting him to Italy would breach his human rights. A Home Office spokesman said: "We believe that foreign prisoners who have committed serious crimes should face automatic deportation from the UK at the end of their sentence. "We will study the judgment and make a decision as to whether to appeal in due course. We are disappointed that the courts have not upheld our decision to pursue deportation in this case." The Home Office argued in the central London tribunal that deporting Chindamo, whose father is Italian and mother is Filipino, was conducive to the public good and was not disproportionate. Chindamo's lawyers argued he no longer has strong links or family ties with Italy because he has been living in Britain since he was five years old. Mr Lawrence, 48, was attacked when a gang of 12 youths led by Chindamo went to attack a boy who had quarrelled with a pupil of Filipino origin. The father of four was punched and stabbed by Chindamo and died the same evening. Chindamo, a member of the Wo-Sing-Wo gang - which aspired to be the juvenile equivalent of the Triads - has always claimed another youth was the killer. He was ordered to be detained indefinitely after a jury found him guilty of the crime. *********************** For the devastated widow of murdered headmaster Philip Lawrence, it is too much. "I feel I can't survive this," she says. "I'm unutterably depressed that the Human Rights Act has failed to encompass the rights of my family to lead a safe, secure and happy life". There cannot be a decent human being who does not share her pain and disgust at what Britain has become: a land where the 'rights' of a killer are exalted, where crime victims matter not a jot and where a remote tribunal tramples over every sense of morality and self-respect. The case of Learco Chindamo insults us all. A violent, truanting 15-year-old, he stabbed Mr Lawrence just for trying to stop the bullying of a younger boy. Now that this squalid undesirable is ending his 12-year sentence, he should in the public interest be automatically deported to his father's homeland, Italy. But not in the view of the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal. These worthies decreed that it would be a breach of his human rights to be sent to that free, sunny, civilised EU nation because, among other things, he can't speak Italian. We have of course seen many lunacies perpetrated in the name of human rights: compensation for IRA terrorist families, prisoners allowed porn, preachers of hatred freed to continue abusing our hospitality. But this ruling stands in a grotesque league of its own. Unless the Home Office wins its appeal, Britain will be obliged to give shelter - and no doubt benefits - to a murderer who offers nothing and may prove a threat. And the state will knowingly inflict more suffering on a family that has endured too much. This profoundly stupid and amoral ruling can only deepen the anger felt by millions who believe their own country is being stolen from them. It will encourage contempt for the law and drag politics deeper into disrepute. For the shame of this affair isn't confined to one tribunal. It is shared by those Labour politicians who so crassly foisted the Human Rights Act on us, without a thought for the consequences. We are all paying for that folly now. And nobody more so than the anguished and disbelieving Frances Lawrence. LEARCE CHINDAMO20 Aug 2007