Sudanese migrant allowed to stay in Britain and cannot be deported because she married her cousin

A Sudanese migrant has been allowed to stay in Britain because she married her first cousin.

Isra Abdallah Ibrahim, from Sudan, claimed Article 8 under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) would be in breach if she was deported as she would be forced to leave her husband, who is her first cousin.

The Home Office initially rejected her asylum claim as it believed she only married her cousin in order to remain with him in the UK once he was granted refugee status.

She claimed the marriage was a "customary Islamic" coupling in Sudan in 2011, the Telegraph reports.

However, Home Office officials questioned her claim as there was no official record of the marriage.

Mrs Ibrahim claimed it was "local tradition" to not officially lodge the partnership.

The couple remarried by proxy three years later when her husband had gone to Libya, a popular location on the refugee route to the UK.

A first-tier immigration tribunal rejected Mrs Ibrahim's asylum application, a higher court has upheld it, finding the marriage was not carried out for immigration purposes and was legitimate.

Cousin marriage is legal in the UK, however, attempts have been made to ban it.

Shadow Transport Secretary Richard Holden tried to make marriage between first cousins illegal earlier this year, but was unsuccessful.

He told GB News in January, after the bill's second reading vote was pushed back, that Labour MPs were "turning a blind eye" to the practice.

The Basildon and Billericay MP said: "If you don’t back first-cousin marriage, you can just say so.

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"But Labour do back first cousin marriage and they’re trying to hide their secretive support for the practice.

"It is an issue bound up with serious health implications, closed communities, and the isolation of the vulnerable.

"I am appalled, but sadly not surprised, that Labour is once again turning a blind eye to the issue and allowing it to be kicked into the long grass rather than taking a genuine stand or even explaining why they continue to back first-cousin marriage in the UK."

The tribunal ruled the marriage was legal according to the Marriage Acts of 1949 and 1986, as well as the Civil Partnership Act of 2004.

It said it was "cleat that the relationship of first cousins is not within the relational prohibition".

The upper court heard the Sudanese woman had "married her sponsor, her cousin, in a customary Islamic marriage in 2011 when they were both residing in Sudan".

She said, in line with local customs, the marriage was "not recorded in any official documentation".

Two years after marrying, her husband relocated to Libya and in order to bring her with him legally, they remarried again to appease the Libyan authorities.

The Home Office concluded her husband had "never intended to set down roots" in Libya and the by proxy marriage in 2014 was carried out in preparation for life in the UK.

Mrs Ibrahim appealed the decision, claiming her right to family life, protected under Article 8 of the ECHR, had been breached.

Upper Tribunal Judge Paul Lodato agreed, saying: "When I stand back and assess the overall evidential picture, Mrs Ibrahim has established on the balance of probabilities, through the fully tested evidence of her sponsor, that she married her husband in 2014 when he was habitually resident in Libya."

He added: "I am satisfied that this all weighs in favour of the sponsor having settled in Libya with a degree of continuity over an appreciable and meaningful period of time.

“Having found that the couple were married when the sponsor was in his country of habitual residence, and in accordance with the parties agreement that this was a decisive and dispositive question of fact, the appeal is allowed because Mrs Ibrahim met the applicable rules which renders the refusal decision demonstrably disproportionate."