Keir Starmer demanded halt of all deportations just weeks before taking over as Labour leader
SIR Keir Starmer demanded the Home Office halt all deportation flights just weeks before he took charge of the Labour party, the Sun on Sunday can reveal.
The leftie leader and dozens of his MPs and shadow cabinet members all backed calls to remove foreign criminals and even hand them mobile phone SIM cards to help them arrange last ditch reviews.
A letter from hard left MP Nadia Whittome emerged this week after Ernesto Elliott, 45 was jailed for life for murdering a 35 year-old man in a knife fight in June 2021.
Six months earlier he was hauled off a plane bound for Jamaica thanks to an intervention from Labour MPs and celebs.
But we can reveal the would-be PM also signed a letter in Feb 2020 calling for “all future charter flights must be suspended” until lessons from the Windrush Scandal – where people who arrived in Britain from the Caribbean were wrongly deported – were implemented.
Other senior Labour MPs – who served in Sir Keir’s shadow cabinet – including David Lammy, Emily Thornberry and Wes Streeting also signed the letter.
It also said: “The Home Office must immediately provide SIM cards for alternative providers in order to
ensure that no one will be removed from the UK without being afforded effective access to legal advice and assistance.”
Labour Party sources say it does not want to block future deportation flights for serious criminals and this letter was signed under the previous regime.
Sir Keir has a long history of working with criminals and terrorists when he was a human rights lawyer.
In 2000, he represented Khalid Al-Fawwaz, an aide of Osama Bin Laden as he sought to escape extradition to the USA.
Al-Fawwaz was eventually extradited to the USA in 2012 and jailed for life in the States for his role in the 1998 Embassy bombings in east Africa.