Phillip Machemedze, 47, worked in the drug and alcohol recovery unit at The Priory for five years without a visa. He also worked for seven years as a support worker for the Milestones Trust, a charity aiding people with learning disabilities.
After the sentencing, a Tory MP said it was a ‘disgrace’ that people who had committed crimes abroad could hide behind the Human Rights Act and stay in Britain.
Machemedze, previously employed by the Zimbabwean dictator, successfully applied for asylum to the UK last year – allowing him and his wife to permanently stay in the country.
He was allowed to stay in Britain even though an immigration hearing was told he broke one victim’s jaw with pliers and shocked another person with electric cables while working for Mugabe.
Machemedze, who is now unemployed and looking to claim benefits, admitted two charges of obtaining pecuniary advantage by deception. However, he was told he would keep his liberty if he volunteered for just half a day a week at his local Pentecostal church. Machemedze, who lives in Bristol with his wife Febbie, was a bodyguard to a senior minister as part of Mugabe’s feared Central Intelligence Organisation.
The court was told that in the seven-year period he had worked in the UK, Machemedze took home a net income of around £151,000, before he applied for asylum.
Speaking after the hearing, Conservative MP Chris Skidmore labelled the case a ‘disgrace’. – www.dailymail.co.uk
Post published in: News