Refugee has conviction quashed after 19 years

A refugee who was jailed for using a false passport as she fled Somalia fearing for her life has had her conviction quashed almost 19 years later.

Mother-of-five Sadia Adow was arrested by border officers at London Stansted Airport, Essex, as she arrived in the UK in November 2007.

She admitted using a fake Swedish passport and was jailed for a year the following month at Chelmsford Crown Court.

However, judges at the Court of Appeal in July were told she was not made aware of a key legal defence and "suffered a substantial injustice" as a result.

The defence - which allows asylum seekers to legally enter the UK when their life or freedom is threatened - was unlikely to have led to her being convicted, they found.

Adow told the court she still felt "shame and stigma" about being jailed.

She had been persecuted for being part of a minority clan in Somalia for a decade, which led to her father's death and her mother's disappearance, court papers showed.

In one attack at the family home, Adow was struck over the head and her younger brother's leg was burned.

"Usually it was not safe for her to go outside," the judges wrote.

An agent arranged for her to leave Somalia on 20 November 2007, travelling via Dubai and Sweden with a false Swedish passport, after Ethiopian soldiers came to her house looking for her.

The eight-day journey ended with her arrest at Stansted Airport upon presenting the fake passport.

Adow was granted refugee status by the Home Office in 2008 and given indefinite leave to remain in the UK in August 2014.

However, her three British Citizenship applications have been refused, due to her conviction.

She appealed against the conviction in October after being advised that had she pleaded not guilty in 2007, "it would quite probably have succeeded".

The judges ruled: "We are satisfied that that the applicant has suffered a substantial injustice."

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