Two Malawians jailed in UK for fake visas -report
Two Malawians are expected to serve six months jail term each in the United Kingdom after a court found them guilty of possessing fake residency permits.
The British Police arrested the two in the company of two other Malawians early this month for living in the UK illegally.
The jailed Malawians, both residents of Nottingham city, have been identified as 25-year-old Gordon Hamdan and Thokozani Phiri aged 24, according to a report in Nottingham Post newspaper.
The report, however, neither discloses the particulars of the two other Malawians nor states what happened to them.
Hamdan is said to have “established a life for himself” in Bulwell Town and had been working at the Co-op since April 2011 despite not having a valid visa to be in the UK for two years.
Prosecutor Dawn Pritchard told Nottingham Crown Court Hamdan was sprung during a police raid in Henrietta Street, Bulwell, on October 5 after police found him as an illegal resident.
Said Prosecutor Pritchard: “Intelligence found that he was overstaying and using an international driving license. His working holiday visa expired in July 2010.”
After the arrest, Hamdan is reported to have provided the police with a valid Malawian Passport but containing a counterfeit residential permit that belonged to a Columbian national.
Hamdan entered UK properly and legally in October 2008 on a working holiday visa.
On appearing before the court, Hamdan, who had been staying with unidentified fiancée, pleaded guilty to possessing a false UK residency permit.
He was then sentenced to six months imprisonment by Judge Nigel Godsmark, QC, and deportation papers were also served on him though the court heard he was planning to appeal against the deportation order.
In a separate hearing held last Friday, the same Nottingham Crown Court also jailed Phiri for six months imprisonment.
The 24-year-old Phiri, according to the newspaper eport, had no fixed abode and admitted possessing two fake residency permits that were actually for Indian and Romanian nationals.
The prosecutor said Phiri entered the UK in 2007 on a student visa to study dental nursing.
He legally obtained a student visa which expired in 2009 but the court heard that “he came into difficulties when he had to pay the remaining course fees and wasn’t able to do so and failed to extend his visa.”
Phiri then paid an unknown man money to fraudulently process him the fake visas.
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