the times | Thursday December 3 2020 1GM 27
News
A rapist who attacked a sleeping
woman and a murderer who killed over
a drug deal were among 23 criminals to
avoid deportation to Jamaica yesterday.
A flight left for Caribbean carrying
only 13 of the 36 passengers who were
due to leave, after challenges by human
rights lawyers and campaign groups.
Those who remained included
rapists, a murderer, two attempted
murderers and drug dealers.
Jermaine Stewart, from Liverpool,
was among those who avoided deporta-
tion. He was sentenced to six years in
2014 for raping a woman who fell asleep
on his sofa. The judge said that she was
“effectively comatose” at the time.
His victim gave a written statement
to the court in which she said that she
became an “emotional wreck” after the
attack. “Before this... I was a happy-go-
lucky girl,” she wrote. “I had hopes and
dreams. But since it happened I’ve felt
completely lost. I’m all over the place.”
Michael White, who was sentenced
in 2003 to a minimum of 18 years for
murder and attempted murder, was
also allowed to remain.
White and a fellow drug dealer
arranged to meet two men they
believed owed them money. They shot
one of the men six times, killing him,
and the other twice. At the sentencing
hearing, the judge said: “There are no
mitigating features.”
The grounds for Stewart and White’s
legal challenges are not known. Several
of those not on the flight claimed that
they were victims of modern slavery.
The government is planning to bring
forward legislation next year to reduce
for cinemas. Studios
are reluctant to release
their biggest films at a
time when audiences
are wary of attending
live events, making it
even harder to sell
tickets to those screens
that have stayed open.
Warner Bros took a
gamble on releasing
Christopher Nolan’s
Tenet this autumn. The
action thriller has now
taken more than
$350 million around
the world, although it
underperformed in the
US and UK.
Cineworld, Britain’s
biggest cinema chain,
closed all its screensuntil further notice in
October, claiming that
the industry was no
longer viable.
Greengrass, 65,
acknowledged that
box-office takings for
News of the World
“might be the same as
when Tenet came out”,
but backed the
“expression of faith
and commitment to
the collective movie-
making and exhibition
business”.
In News of the World,
Hanks stars as a
widowed US Civil War
veteran who tries to
return a kidnapped girl
to her family.BRUCE TALAMON/UNIVERSAL STUDIOSBourne director
pleads for the
future of cinema
Tom Hanks and Helena Zengel will be seen in US cinemas in News of the World, by Paul GreengrassMurderer, rapists
and drug dealers
avoid deportation
Steven Swinford Deputy Political Editor the number of last-minute appeals. The
legislation will require those claiming
asylum to bring forward all their claims
at the start of the process.
Chris Philp, the immigration minis-
ter, said: “It is disappointing that spe-
cialist immigration law firms continued
to use last-minute tactics to remove a
significant number of offenders from
this flight. We will be working through
these cases as quickly as possible.”
The Home Office said that the 13 on
the flight had combined sentences of
more than 100 years. Mr Philp insisted
this week that there was “no element of
discrimination in this policy” and that it
applied to French and Spanish nation-
als just as much as individuals from
Jamaica.
Priti Patel, the home secretary, ac-
cused Labour MPs of “re-traumatising”
victims by calling to cancel the flight.
Clive Lewis, the Labour MP, had or-
ganised a letter signed by nearly 70 MPs
calling for the flight to be delayed.
Mr Lewis said that criminals return-
ing to Jamaica faced huge dangers. “We
know that five UK deportees were
killed between 2018 and 2019,” he said.
Bell Ribeiro-Addy, the Labour MP
for Streatham, told the Commons that
no one opposing the flight condoned
the offences. “It’s the process of mass
deportation which is wrong,” she said.T
he British
director Paul
Greengrass has
become the
latest Hollywood
heavyweight to speak
out in defence of
cinema, praising the
decision to give his
new film a US
theatrical release
despite the pandemic
(Matthew Moore
writes).
Greengrass admitted
that News of the World,
a western starring Tom
Hanks, might struggle
at the box office like
Tenet, the only real
blockbuster
released during
since March.
Big films
have either
been pushed
to next year,
like the latest
James Bond
instalment
No Time To
Die, or gone
direct to
streaming
services, as with Mulan
on Disney+.
News of the World,
which has been tipped
for Oscar success, will
be shown in US
cinemas from
Christmas Day,
although British
viewers will have to
watch it on the small
screen after Netflix
purchased the
international rights.
Greengrass, whose
previous films include
United 93 and The
Bourne Ultimatum,
said: “Somewhere
in the big-screen
experience, you
are elevated,
and healed.”
He told the
Hollywood
magazine
Deadline: “I
love that
Universal, a
movie
studio that
of course is
twitching like
all the studiosand all of us are in the
pandemic, is going for
the collective
experience... we have
to try and somehow
keep these collective
experiences going.
“It’s an expression of
the deep commitment
that studio has to the
craft of film-making
and the theatrical
experience that means
so much in all our
societies. And a film
about storytelling in
dark times, with a
healing message, is a
great one to do it on.”
Coronavirus has
created a vicious cycleJermaine Stewart
raped a woman as
she slept on a sofa