Government to Appeal Ruling on Killer of Christian Headmaster

The government will "vigorously" contest a ruling allowing the Italian-born killer of headmaster Philip Lawrence to stay in Britain, Justice Secretary Jack Straw said on Tuesday.

|PIC1|Learco Chindamo, 26, won an appeal on Friday against being deported at the end of his sentence for the murder of the 48-year-old teacher outside a London school in 1995.

Chindamo's lawyers had used human rights laws to challenge a government attempt to deport him to Italy.

Straw said he would study "with care" the ruling from the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal.

"We are very vigorously appealing this," Straw told BBC radio. "This was not our expectation.

"We have every right to appeal in this case, not least to argue about the victim's and the community's human rights," he added.

"It is very probable that most of the issue arises not from the Human Rights Act but from European Union law," he said.

Straw said the government would challenge claims by Chindamo's lawyers that he had a right to live in Britain under EU law.

Chindamo's solicitor Nigel Leskin told BBC radio on Monday it would be disproportionate to deport his client to Italy.

Chindamo has not lived in Italy since he was five, has no connections there and does not speak Italian.

Straw said he would offer to meet Lawrence's widow, Frances, to discuss the case and the wider issue of gang violence.

Frances Lawrence told BBC radio she was devastated by the tribunal decision, as she had always been led to believe that Chindamo would be deported at the end of his jail term.

"Within the confines of the law Mr Chindamo has the same rights as my son whose father he killed.

"What makes me so depressed is how the Human Rights Act, which I have always been a staunch advocate of ... allowed someone who destroyed a life to pick and choose how he wants to live his."

Chindamo who was 15 at the time of the killing, was jailed for at least 12 years in 1996 and becomes eligible for parole next year.

The Asylum Tribunal decision is a blow to the government, which has pledged to deport freed foreign prisoners.

It emerged last year that more than 1,000 foreign prisoners had been freed from jails and allowed to stay in the country when they should have been considered for deportation.

Conservative Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said the Chindamo ruling exposed the "clumsy incompetence of the government's human rights legislation".

Lawrence's death shocked people across the country and even the Queen made a rare public donation to a fund set up in his memory.

The father-of-four was stabbed in the chest as he tried to break up a fight outside St George's Roman Catholic School in Maida Vale.