A restaurant worker who spent years living illegally in Wales spent £2,000 on a false application to deceive authorities into letting him stay in the country has been jailed for one year.
A jury at Swansea Crown Court found Nurul Islam guilty of obtaining leave to remain in the United Kingdom by deception – by using the name and date of birth of a man called Alaur Rahman in his application to the Home Office between May 26 and June 16, 2015.
He was also found guilty of being in possession of an identity document of improper mention – a Bangladeshi passport relating to somebody else on May 27, 2015.
According to local media at a three-day trial the jury heard how Islam, who is orginally from Bangladesh, had come to the UK in 2010 to live with his aunt and uncle in Swansea after police began looking for him in his home country due to his support to the Bangladesh National Party.
Islam had been granted a visa on May 20, 2010, to stay in the UK for six months but overstayed in the country between 2010 and 2015 in the knowledge he was doing so illegally, working at the West Cross Tandoori restaurant.
Islam, who is unable to speak, read or write English, made another application in 2015 for 'no time limit' leave in the name of Mr Rahman while using his own photo and Swansea address details with the application.
On the first day of the trial the jury was told that Mr Rahman is a real person, from Birmingham, who had previously successfully and legitimately applied for an indefinite stay in the UK in 2002, and six years later, successfully obtained an actualisation as a British citizen in a legitimate application and was issued a certificate subsequently.
Giving evidence on the second day of the trial, Islam claimed he paid £2,000 in instalments for help completing an application, with the help of a friend he met at the restaurant, Sujan Ali Chowdhury, who took him to a solicitor named Sheikh Usman and has since been sentenced to seven years imprisonment for conspiracy to facilitate the commission of a breach of UK immigration law by a non-EU person.
Islam had said while giving evidence during the trial that he did not suspect the activity was wrong because he was taken to a British solicitor and "didn't think a legal person would do anything fraudulent".
He told the court, with the help of a translator, that due to his inability to understand English he was unable to read the documents that he signed and just signed in the areas he was instructed to.
