Prison: Safara Salami at his small flat in West Drayton, London;
A dangerous sex offender whose claim for asylum was thrown out eight years ago is still living in Britain – and costing the taxpayer hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Sarafa Salami, 48, was sentenced to four years in prison and ordered to sign the sex offenders’ register for life after his attack on a 21-year-old student in 2005, two years after he should have left the country.
Described on his files as a ‘risk to women and children’, Salami was ordered to be deported on his release from prison in 2009.
But the West African remains in the UK as he has fathered two children and claims his human right to a family life would be violated if he is sent back to his native Togo.
The revelations make a mockery of the Government’s promise to deport all foreign criminals convicted of serious offences.
Salami’s children are understood to both be under ten and live in Liverpool – where he carried out his sex attack in 2005.
He lives above a hair salon in West Drayton, West London, in an £800-a-month studio flat next door to a busy pub.
He also receives £160 a month in food vouchers.
A resident said: ‘To know there is a sex attacker living a few hundred yards away is quite frightening.
‘It beggars belief that his human rights are being looked after. What about those of his victim and the risk he poses to women who live and work nearby?’
Another neighbour told the Mail: ‘I am disgusted to learn he is a sex offender. He said he had spent time inside for fraud but not this.
‘He regularly brings women back to his room. I’m sure they have no idea of his background.’
Student: Salami was studying in Liverpool when he was convicted of a sexual offence;
Salami arrived in Britain in 2000. After his claim for asylum was thown out in 2003, he was supposed to leave but failed to do so and re-applied after fathering two children.
In December 2005 he was a student at Liverpool John Moores University and working part-time for a cleaning company.
After a night out, a student who worked for the same company was drunk and went with a friend and Salami to a taxi rank in Liverpool city centre.
Her friend got a cab and he assured her he would get a taxi for the other woman.
Instead she found herself at a house in Toxteth where he attacked her. He was convicted of sexual assault and cleared of a count of rape.
Leaked files from the UK Border Agency reveal a decade of failed attempts to send him home.
In that time he is estimated to have cost hundreds of thousands of pounds in accommodation, legal costs, police time, benefits and visits by immigration officials.
His file states that on arrival in 2000, he ‘requests self-catering accommodation due to his special dietary needs ... He would also like to be placed near a hospital due to the potential need for an operation/hospital treatment.
‘He would also like to have English classes and so requests that there is a college nearby. Finally, he needs to be near a mosque for religious reasons’.
A note the next month says: ‘Oblige request if possible.’
He was given a flat in Liverpool while his application was considered.
His case was thrown out but he re-applied and fathered two children. This time, he was successful.
His right to remain was revoked when he was convicted of the sex attack.
Released from prison in 2009 he should have been deported, but was freed and remains here.
At his London flat, which he called ‘a little prison’, Salami claimed he was wrongly convicted, adding: ‘There’s no law in this country for a foreign person.’
This weekend another case of a foreign criminal avoiding deportation came to light.
Tarique Manahod, 33, was jailed for 15 months in 2005 and ordered to be deported – but remains in Britain because the Algerian consulate did not accept he was an Algerian citizen.
A UK Border Agency spokesman said: ‘These cases have appalling immigration and criminal records and we are committed to removing them from the UK.
‘This government is determined to remove foreign criminals from the UK and does not believe that Article 8 Right to family life should outweigh serious criminality in such cases.
‘The UK Border Agency has introduced tough new procedures to remove foreign criminals from the country.
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