Pakistani man jailed over child bride migration scam fights to return to Britain

 An asylum seeker jailed for a sham marriage with a schoolgirl has married her again in a bid to live in Britain, The Telegraph can reveal.

Nasir Khalil was imprisoned nine years ago after he “deceived” a Slovakian child into coming to Britain for a Muslim wedding ceremony held four days after her 16th birthday.

The Pakistani man, who was 36 at the time and living in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, had children with the girl before and after his 15-month imprisonment.

A jury found he was part of a “mail order” gang “buying” women living in the European Union who would then defraud the British immigration system by claiming their husbands had rights to stay in the UK.

Khalil was deported to Pakistan in 2019. The following year, he married the Slovakian, then 23, again, after she was granted indefinite leave to remain in Britain with their children.

Now, his lawyers say he has lodged a new application with Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary, to try to obtain a family visa so he can return to Britain.

Wife a ‘child victim’ of his crimes

Details of Khalil’s 13-year campaign have emerged in a judgment handed down by an upper tribunal, the effective appeal court for immigration and asylum cases.

It revealed the numerous ways Khalil, now 48, has used the legal system, often at taxpayers’ expense, to try to settle in Britain.

While the latest ruling allows him to be identified, his wife has been granted anonymity.

The ruling shows that immigration judges accept his claim to be in a “durable… loving and stable relationship” with the woman who is now his visa sponsor, despite her being 20 years his junior and a “child victim” of his crime.

Khalil’s lawyers claimed he was entitled to a “residence card … as the spouse of an European Economic Area national exercising EU treaty rights”. The judges rejected this claim, leaving him only one other legal route – an application for a family card  – which is pending.

Khalil left Pakistan in 2012 and arrived in Britain to visit family, apparently in Rochdale. He was initially refused entry clearance but was then allowed to stay for a short period. However, he failed to leave the country.

After declaring that he had “divorced” his first wife, who had remained in Pakistan, he “undertook Nikah” – a Muslim wedding ceremony – with the girl in November 2013. 

His trial judge concluded the girl “received little or no instruction before the conversion to Islam” and the ceremony was “not conducted in a language she understood”.

He tried to use his “mail-order bride” to claim he had rights to remain in Britain under EU freedom of movement laws.

A year later he was arrested, prompting him to apply for an “extended family” residence card because his “wife” had had a child.

After that request was rejected he applied again, and was again rejected because he refused to provide “the necessary biometric information”.

Not ‘conducive to public good’

In 2016, after being convicted of fraud by arranging sham marriages, Khalil fought deportation by claiming he was now in “fear of the Taliban in Pakistan”.

Despite a deportation order in 2017, it took two years for him to exhaust the appeals process before he was eventually returned to Pakistan in 2019. 

That year, his “wife” was given indefinite leave to remain in the UK, before she travelled to Pakistan in 2020 to marry him again.

Khalil tried to use EU rules to return to the UK in 2020 but Priti Patel, the home secretary at the time, concluded his “character and conduct” were not “conducive to the public good” because he had tried to “undermine and circumvent” immigration laws.

The latest ruling said his wife “was a victim” of Khalil’s “criminal offending”, adding: “She met the appellant when she was 15 and they were married by an Islamic religious ceremony shortly after she turned 16.

“The sentencing judge concluded that the jury found the appellant engaged in the religious ceremony solely to secure status in this country and consequently the sponsor was deceived when entering into the marriage.”

A spokesman for BS Solicitors, which took on Khalil’s case more recently, said an application for a family visa based upon his recent “legitimate” marriage is currently before the Home Secretary.