The European Court of Human Rights has started proceedings to hear the appeal against the deportation of a serial criminal from Odense.
In March 2011, the former gang leader Mahmoud Khalil Salem – commonly known as Fez Fez – was sentenced to six years in prison for selling cannabis and for carrying out threats and blackmail.
While the Odense City Court and the Eastern High Court both decided not to deport the stateless Palestinian, the Supreme Court decided in October 2011 that he should be kicked out of the country.
Human rights case
Fez Fez’s lawyer, Juul Eriksen, told Ritzau today that his client's case has been picked up by the European Court of Human Rights, which has sent a dossier to the Danish authorities and given them until January to reply.
“So it looks like the court is going to take the case,” Eriksen said. “It’s hard to get your case heard as they receive up to 50,000 complaints a year and can only handle a few of them. So just the fact that they are taking up the case means that there is something in it.”
Family considerations
The Eastern High Court argued that Fez Fez should not be deported given that he has eight children and a wife in Denmark, all of whom have Danish citizenship.
But the Supreme Court decided that the nature of his crimes was so severe that he had lost his right to remain in Denmark.
Given Fez Fez's stateless status, there are doubts over whether Lebanon or Syria would choose to accept him on behalf of the Palestinian Territories.
READ MORE: Supreme Court deportees freedom of movement violated
If neither country were to take him, he would have to remain in Denmark under a regime called tålt ophold after leaving prison, in which he would have to live in Sandholm Asylum Centre and report to the Danish police three times a week.
Tålt ophold has been successfully challenged in the Supreme Court by using the European Convention of Human Rights to argue that it violates the right to free movement.
