A British man convicted of murder is suing the Home Office after he was wrongly deported to Jamaica.
The Guardian newspaper reported that Richard Wallace, whose parents came to Britain as part of the Windrush generation in the 1950s, was born in Paddington in London in 1969. In 1998 he was convicted of murdering a man working at a takeaway in south London.
After serving his sentence he was incorrectly classed as Jamaican, in what Wallace believes was a case of mistaken identity, and deported to Jamaica in 2015.
He returned to the UK on his British passport in 2018. But on his return, he was accused of using his own passport fraudulently and was jailed for two years.
Wallace was released in October 2020 after DNA tests with other British members of his family proved him to be a match with them.
He told the Guardian that his treatment had left him completely broken and that he believed as a black man he was a victim of institutional racism.
Wallace's attorney, Naga Kandiah, says he is launching legal action against the Home Office and other government bodies. He says serious maladministration and incompetence led to a British citizen being deported under a different name and falsely imprisoned.
