The widow of Philip Lawrence, the murdered headmaster, last night attacked a decision to allow her husband’s killer to remain in the UK because deportation would breach his human rights.

Frances Lawrence said that she was “devastated” to learn that the Italian-born Learco Chindamo, 26, has won his appeal against being sent to Italy if the Parole Board agrees to release him from prison.

Mrs Lawrence said that she was “demoralised” by the ruling that Chindamo should not be deported because it would breach his right to family life under the Human Rights Act. She said: “I am utterly depressed that the Human Rights Act has failed to encompass the rights of my family. I feel that I have always been a staunch advocate of the Human Rights Act but it must encompass some responsibil-ity. I can’t fight any more. I feel I can’t survive this.”

The decision by the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal renewed the controversy over the Human Rights Act and the Government’s expressed desire to deport foreign criminals who have committed crimes in the UK.

Last month Gordon Brown said in an interview: “If you commit a crime you will be deported. You play by the rules or you face the consequences.”

But lawyers for Chindamo argued that the attempt by the Home Office to deport him to Italy, where he had not lived since he was 5, breached his human rights.

Last night the Home Office said that it would appeal against the decision. The department was trying to remove him on the grounds that his presence in the UK was “not conducive to the public good” and that deportation was not disproportionate.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “We are disappointed that the courts have not upheld our decision to pursue deportation in this case. We believe that foreign prisoners who have committed serious crimes should face automatic deportation from the UK at the end of their sentence.”

The killer’s lawyers told the tribunal that deporting their client was illegal as he was from a European Union country and had lived in the UK for ten years by 1995.

The case was unusual because the tribunal also had to take into account Chindamo’s length of continuous residence in Britain even though almost half of his 21 years in the UK have been spent behind bars.

Nigel Leskin, Chindamo’s solicitor, said that it would be “disproportionate” to deport him because he had no connections with Italy and did not even speak the language.

He told the BBC Radio 4 PM programme that Chindamo was a reformed character who was unlikely to offend again. “He was involved in a gang when he was young. He was a kid trying to act up big. He was out of control and he thought he knew everything. He now realises how wrong he was.”

Chindamo was jailed for life in 1996 for killing Mr Lawrence, 48, outside his school in Maida Vale, West London, in 1995. The head teacher was attacked when a gang of 12 youths, led by Chindamo, went to attack a boy who had quarrelled with a pupil of Filipino origin. The father of four was punched and stabbed by Chindamo and died the same evening.

Chindamo, a member of the Wo-Sing-Wo gang — which aspired to be the juvenile equivalent of the Triads — has always claimed another youth was the killer. He claimed that he was the victim of mistaken identity because the other youth was wearing his jacket, and that he was 30 feet away from the murder scene.

He was ordered to be detained at Her Majesty’s Pleasure and told that he must serve a minimum term of 12 years before he could be considered for release by the Parole Board. His minimum term expires next year.

Chindamo, who was 15 when he killed Mr Lawrence, was told the news that he could remain in the UK at the weekend. He was said to be “pleased” because his “family and life were in the UK”.

He was said to have hoped that the decision would not “cause grief” to Mrs Lawrence or her family, to whom he expressed “deepest sympathy”.

Chindamo was being prepared for release and while in Ford open prison, West Sussex, had been allowed out. But last summer at the height of the foreign national prisoner scandal he was one of hundreds of foreign inmates moved back to a closed jail.

His father is Italian, his mother from the Philippines, and he has an Italian passport. He is understood to have had little contact with his father, who was jailed in Italy for 15 years in the 1990s for hurling acid in a woman’s face in a row about drugs.

Yesterday David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, said: “It is a stark demonstration of the clumsy incompetence of this Government’s human rights legislation that we are unable to send a proven killer back to his own country, especially when that country is in the EU.”

Alan Gordon, vice-chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales, branded the decision as “absolute madness” and said he hoped that the Home Office would “appeal against this ludicrous decision”.

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