Anicet Mayela, a Congolese man, has been jailed for ten years after raping a 15-year-old girl. The victim did not only endure the assault but endured becoming pregnant and having an abortion.

Mayela entered Britain in 2004, claiming that his life was at risk in the Congo, but his asylum claim was rejected. His subsequent appeal was also rejected. Three separate attempts were made to deport the man but all failed, with Mayela allegedly having his hand broken on the first attempt and the third failing because the air crew would not take off with the deportee onboard.

Mayela then appears to have joined a campaign to have the Campsfield House detention centre closed. He was pictured holding a “migrants are not criminals” sign in 2005. Eventually, in 2010, he was granted asylum.

How did this man stay in Britain? 

Well, activists were campaigning on his behalf. A 2005 article from the Institute for Race Relations bore the headline “Fight to prevent deportation of injured asylum seeker”. The Institute of Race Relations is an “independent educational charity” with funding from charitable trusts like Paul Hamlyn Foundation (PHF), Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust and Garden Court Chambers. Of course, it goes without saying that the IRR could not have known what Mr Mayela would go on to do. But it is notable that even in 2005, the IRR did not make any argument for why Mayela should have been allowed to stay. The injustice of his asylum application being rejected appears to have been taken for granted.

Another interesting note comes at the bottom of the IRR’s piece: 

Anicet’s supporters are calling for the removal of the threat of deportation and for him to be granted refugee status. One of them, Teresa Hayter, told IRR news: ‘Anicet is very impressive, but he is fearful that he could be locked up again and, worse still, removed to Congo. He has been told that they may still try to remove him.’

The only Teresa Hayter Parliament Square has heard of is the daughter of the late British diplomat Sir William Hayter. Despite her privileged background, the young Ms Hayter became a Marxist radical. Her early book Hayter of the Bourgeois begins with the charmingly honest admission that “I was offered a contract to write this book for one main reason: that Lord Longford is a Chairman of Sidwick and Jackson and is a mate of my father” and goes on to salute the “workers’ states” in “the Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, Korea and, especially, Cuba”. 

In 2001, Hayter wrote the book Open Borders: The Case Against Immigration Controls. She backed a campaign to have Professor David Coleman, a co-founder of the think tank Migration Watch, sacked from Oxford. She also organised protests outside Campsfield House — the same detention centre outside of which Mr Mayela appears to have photographed.

Again, none of Mayela’s advocates could have known that he was going to go on to commit such a heinous crime. But Parliament Square does believe that his case presents a striking argument against open borders.