Asylum seeker wins deportation halt

Milan Simic faces an uncertain future

A Croatian asylum-seeker facing immediate deportation after working in Cardiff for two years has won a High Court bid for a judicial review of his case.

Milan Simic - who had been granted temporary asylum - was sent to a detention centre near Heathrow airport apparently without warning after attending a routine check at Rhymney Police Station.

Nicola Blake: 'Concerns'

Lawyers lodged the appeal in London on Friday.

His fiancé, Nicola Blake, said she is hoping Mr Simic, 21, will be allowed to return to Cardiff to wait for a decision on his future, which could take up to six months.

Miss Blake fears for the safety of Mr Simic, an Orthodox Serb, if he is returned to the Balkans - he escaped from Croatia fearing he would be called on by the Serb army to fight his Croat neighbours.

But she is still recovering from the way the Home Office went about enforcing its decision.

She said: "We popped in for his weekly registration after getting a bottle of wine to take home, and he never came back out.

"I just don't understand. He is not costing the government any money. It will be a devastating feeling if he goes - he's got a family," she added.

Mr Simic does not want to return to the former Yugoslavia

Mr Simic, who had been working in a bar in the Welsh capital, was facing being flown back to his native Croatia on Sunday until the High Court appeal overturned the ruling.

His London-based solicitor Jovanka Savic believes the Home Office has acted wrong procedurally in not giving her client warning of or reasons for his deportation.

She explained that Home Secretary David Blunkett refused his formal asylum application in September 2001.

But that decision was overturned by an adjudicator, whose own decision was later quashed by a tribunal, leaving Mr Simic still on temporary residency in the UK.

We popped in to the police station and he never came back out

Nicola Blake, girlfriend

Ms Savic is confident the High Court judicial review will block the deportation for at least six weeks.

"His original appeal was granted on human rights grounds because he had already been subjected to inhumane and degrading treatment," she told BBC News Online.

"He has been given no reason for his arrest or deportation; he is a capable, intelligent person.

"If someone has regularly complied with conditions of temporary admission, this cannot be right. There is absolutely no justification."

She blamed the Immigration Service for changing a policy granting 28 days notice before deportation.

The Home Office said a right of appeal is granted in all such cases.