An illegal immigrant from Bolivia was caught when he was accused of two rapes in Kings Langley, of which he has been found not guilty today.
Former restaurant worker Yordy Fernando Miranda Hanco, 28, was found with a fake Spanish passport by officers investigating the allegations.
He was charged with two offences of raping a woman on March 31, 2021. Today, a jury at St Albans Crown Court found him not guilty of one charge and could not agree on the other.
Prosecutor Kate Temple-Mabe said there would be not retrial.
He was found with the Spanish passport on his arrest on July 28, 2021. “He admitted his intention to use the passport to obtain employment as a European citizen, she said.
In 2017 he had been removed from the country, having tried to illegally enter Scotland on a ferry from Belfast. He re-entered the UK in 2020.
Hanco, of Cold Harbour Lane, Camberwell, London, appeared for sentence having admitted possessing a false identity document.
Defending, Charles Drinnan said he had already served the equivalent of a 20 month custodial sentence on remand and on a qualifying curfew.
He said: “There is no evidence to suggest he used the document in any way. When he was arrested he was working at a restaurant. The manager believed him to be Spanish.”
Mr Drinnan said he is applying for asylum in the UK because his life was endangered by criminal gangs in Bolivia who had tried to involve him in supplying drugs.
“He declined to do it. He was violently assaulted and suffered a cracked nose and dislocated shoulder. His brother had been killed.”
He said Hanco and a friend had been picked up and driven into the jungle to work in a cocaine factory. On the fourth night they heard gun shots and escaped by running through the jungle and swimming down the river.
Judge Richard Foster told Hanco, who was aided by a Spanish interpreter, “If you had not been arrested you would have continued to have the passport in your possession allowing you to falsely claim you were EU citizen. You had already been made to leave the country once so you knew the importance of immigration documents.”
Hanco has been sentenced to nine months in jail. The effect of the sentence means he will be released because of the time he has already served.
The passport is to be destroyed.
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