Crisis deepens for UK's Clarke

LONDON - A suspect in the killing of a policewoman in Bradford last year was a foreign criminal that officials failed to remove because it was too dangerous to return him to his home country.

The disclosure that Mustaf Jamma, a Somalian on the run from police, had been considered for deportation is a damaging new blow to Home Secretary Charles Clarke as he attempts to draw a line under the recent prisoner-release scandal.

Clarke was to make an emergency statement to MPs today on the crisis and faces an investigation over the fiasco both by the Parliamentary Ombudsman and a separate Commons committee.

Although Jamma was not one of the 1023 foreign inmates who were released without a deportation hearing, his alleged involvement in Sharon Beshenivsky's death raises difficult new questions for the Government ahead of tonight's local elections, over its penal and immigration policy.

Jamma, a repeat offender, was released from prison in the northern spring last year. His case was examined at that point but officials did not order his deportation because Somalia, much of which is run by feuding warlords, is considered highly dangerous.

About six months later, Beshenivsky, 38, was shot dead as she investigated a reported robbery at a travel agency in Bradford.

- INDEPENDENT