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Ahmed pinned the boy to his bed, held a hand over his mouth and abused him. He was jailed in 1994, but has been allowed to remain in Britain because of the political instability in Somalia.

Usha Sood, an immigration lawyer, said: “Blair’s proposal to automatically deport people is theoretical and legal nonsense, which would be in breach of the Human Rights Act and the 1951 United Nations refugees convention. All of these cases would be open to legal challenge and it would be unlawful to remove someone from the country if they were in the process of claiming asylum.”

Legal experts say Blair reacted to the controversy over the release of freed foreign prisoners with an ill-thought-out proposal. They argue that if the Home Office had heeded warnings dating back eight years about failures in the deportation system, more effective measures could have been taken to avert the scandal.

The case of Rashid Musa, a freed foreign prisoner, was one of the first to expose the dangerous flaws in the system. In February 1998 Musa, a dangerous ex-convict whom the Home Office had failed to deport, raped a woman cleaner in London. The next day Musa attacked and raped a schoolboy on a train.

When he was convicted, the Old Bailey judge highlighted that a court had previously recommended Musa’s deportation and called for a Home Office inquiry into what had gone wrong. A leader in The Sun newspaper proclaimed: “The stupefying incompetence of the immigration service allowed a convicted sex attacker to go free when he should be have been deported. Their unforgivable slackness meant a woman and boy were raped.”

But despite the warnings, the scandal continued with 1,023 foreign national prisoners being released between 1999 and 2006 without even being considered for deportation. Gordon Turner, a lawyer who fought for compensation for Musa’s female rape victim, said: “It is absolutely lamentable that that government did not act on this issue before.

“This woman’s life was ruined by what happened and she was refused compensation from the Home Office. She didn’t even get a letter of apology. She lives in London and she sees the Houses of Parliament every day and she thinks to herself, ‘What the bloody hell do they actually do in there?’” One of the biggest problems for the Home Office is that even when it correctly identifies foreign nationals in prison to deport, the prisoner can use an often lengthy appeal system to their advantage.

Adnan Alatawneh, 40, who lives in Acton, west London, is typical of a foreign prisoner who has successfully opposed the government’s attempt to deport him. Alatawneh was found guilty of raping a 19-year-old au pair at her home and jailed for five years at the Old Bailey in 1998. He was recommended for deportation but successfully claimed he was a Palestinian who fled his home country of Jordan after serving time as a political prisoner.

Hikmet Bozat, a Kurdish Turk, is a convicted terrorist who is still in Britain 13 years after an Old Bailey judge recommended that he be deported after serving his prison term for helping petrol bomb the Turkish embassy, a community centre, airline offices and two Turkish banks in London in 1993. He was jailed for 15 years but the Home Office allowed him to stay in Britain on human rights grounds.

Tracked down to a flat in north London, Bozat admitted his past, but said he had moved on, and was now a history teacher: “I am not involved in anything — I’m living my life with my children and my wife. I am very happy.”

The Home Office insists there will now be a “presumption” that those convicted of serious offences would be deported. A spokeswoman said the proposals would be subject to consultation and it was too early to comment on claims that they were “unworkable”.

Additional reporting: Robert Booth, Ali Hussain, Ed Habershon

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