A Bangladeshi restaurant worker who claims to have paid a lawyer £2,000 to get legal residency rights in the UK is on trial for faking his identity in the application.
Nurul Islam told Swansea Crown Court in Wales this week that he could not read or write English and was therefore unaware that the forms he had signed for Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) had a different name on it – that of another Bangladesh-born British man Alaur Rahman.
Islam, 39, is accused of getting ILR in 2015 by deception and is also charged with being in possession of a Bangladeshi passport relating to somebody else as an improper identity document.
Islam told the court that he was born in Bangladesh and came to the UK in 2010 because he was a supporter of the Bangladesh National Party and participated in BNP rallies. He feared that police in Bangladesh were looking for him and therefore moved to Swansea in Wales to live with relatives.
“I didn't think it was wrong because I was taken to a British solicitor and I didn't think a legal person would do anything fraudulent," he claimed, in reference to the lawyer he had paid for his residency application to the Home Office five years ago.
"I put my trust in solicitors and thought they would do everything in the correct way," he claimed.
Islam was arrested following raids at two curry houses in Swansea where he worked and his fake identity was uncovered. He has pleaded not guilty to charges of deception and his trial remains ongoing.