A serial sex offender is to be allowed to stay in Britain because deporting him to his native Sierre Leone would breach his human right to a family life, an immigration appeal court has ruled.

The Home Office wanted to deport Mohammed Kendeh, who has been assessed as having a “high risk of reoffending”, to his home country.

But a panel of immigration judges has ruled that Kendeh should be allowed to stay in Britain because he came here at the age of six and has virtually no family in West Africa.

The case highlights the difficulty the Government has in deporting foreign criminals because of human rights laws. It follows a ruling this year to allow Italian-born Learco Chindamo, who murdered the headteacher Philip Lawrence in London, to stay in Britain because he, too, has spent most of his life here.

Kendeh, 20, who has admitted assaulting 11 women in the past five years and has committed other offences including robbery, burglary and drug crimes, is currently on remand in prison awaiting trial for robbery.

One of his victims, Gabrielle Brown, who has waived her right to anonymity, said: “I feel devastated. How is it right that somebody who has offended so seriously against defenceless women is allowed to remain in this country? It is more than possible he will rape or kill a future victim.”

The Home Office tried last year to deport Kendeh, from Peckham in southeast London, but the decision was overturned by an immigration judge and upheld on appeal by the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal.

The tribunal panel, headed by Sir Henry Hodge, agreed with the earlier ruling that Kendeh was effectively “one of us” because he had come to Britain at an early age and had only a grandparent in Sierre Leone.

The ruling disclosed that Kendeh first went to jail when he was 15 and had been “assessed as showing a high risk of reoffending”. It said that he had a “history of offending and in particular of serious sexual assault”. It added that he had pleaded guilty to six other indecent assault charges in 2003.

Kendeh, who was released to a bail hostel in Catford, South London, halfway through his sentence this year, is now in jail awaiting trial for robbery.

A spokesman for the Judicial Communications Office said that the decision by the panel was a reconsideration of a decision made by an immigration judge. The panel’s role was to reverse the judge’s decision only if that judgment contained an error in law. In this case the panel concluded as follows: “We are not convinced that the findings and conclusions of the immigration judge are either perverse or unreasonable. That is, in our view, the only basis upon which we can interfere with the decision.”

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