He informed BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “It appears from what little we know of this case, that this is an individual whose asylum or humanitarian protection in the UK was granted by a tribunal, so probably by a judge rather than Home Office officials, despite the fact that he had been convicted of a sexual offence and on the basis of evidence which, we shall have to see, may well be spurious or insubstantial, such as this suggestion that he had converted to Christianity.”