Amin and Faye Bekai Win

Amin and Faye Bekai won their case after the Home Office Minister, Michael O'Brien, stated that having "had the case fully reviewed in the light of his wife's medical conditionä he decided "very exceptionally,ä to allow Mr. Bekai to remain in the UK.
Amin's campaign began when he spoke from the floor at a public meeting held in Hackney, telling the audience of his struggle to remain in the UK with his wife and their child. From then on he received the support of the Hackney Community Law Centre and the Hackney Migrant and Refugee Support Group.
The Home Office had insisted that although Amin's marriage was genuine he should return to Algeria before applying to return to the UK. In the meantime Amin's asylum claim was refused. It would have been almost impossible for Amin to apply to re-enter the UK given that he was at serious risk of being arrested if he was returned to Algeria and given that the British Embassy in Algiers is closed.
Faye Bekai's doctor pointed out that Amin is the main carer for both herself and their child, and that if Amin was forced to leave the UK she would face a serious relapse in her medical condition of schizophrenia. The suggestion that Faye could join her husband in Algeria where British nationals are in danger of assassination and where medical treatment for schizophrenia would not match the treatment given in the UK, and would in any case be offered to her in Arabic, was absurd.
The Home Office have argued that Faye should have been aware of her husband's immigration status when she married him. Yet, as with the majority of people in the UK, Faye believed that once the Home Office accepted that her marriage was genuine, her husband would then be allowed to remain in the UK. Other campaigns in similar circumstances (see the Latif Campaign in this issue) continue their struggle to be allowed to remain in the UK as unified families.