Australians deport Silence Of The Lambs rapist back to the UK - 44 years after he emigrated

• Dragged his victim into a 'shed of horrors', strapped bomb to her body and demanded she call her parents begging for money
• Had lived in Australia since 1967 but still British citizen
• If we had tried to deport him, human rights law would have stopped us
• Breaking parole in Melbourne final straw for Australian government

By Richard Shears and Nick Mcdermott

Sick: Leslie Cunliffe (in sunglasses) is being deported back to Britain from Australia
A British man jailed for raping a young woman in Australia is set to be deported back to the UK, despite not having lived here for more than 40 years.
Dubbed the ‘Silence of the Lambs’ rapist after torturing his victim in a squalid dungeon, Leslie Neil Cunliffe, 63, will be sent back to Britain even though he has spent his entire adult life abroad and raised a family in Australia.
Last night politicians voiced their anger at Britain’s inability to take similar action against foreign criminals.
MPs are furious that had Britain tried to deport an Australian – or other foreign passport holder guilty of similar offences, the Government would almost certainly have been defeated by human rights law.
The deportation of Cunliffe comes just a day after the Daily Mail revealed that more than 3,200 foreign criminals, failed asylum seekers and EU ‘benefit tourists’ are using the Human Rights Act to thwart their removal.
An estimated 400 foreign prisoners each year successfully claim that deporting them after they leave jail would breach their right to a family life in Britain.
Backbench Tory MP Douglas Carswell last night called for the abolition of the Human Rights Act, which prevents Britain from being a ‘self-governing’ nation.
He said: ‘The Australian government is clearly acting in the best interests of its citizens. I envy them for being able to act so decisively. If only we could do the same.
‘If the people who run the country weren’t so pathetic, we too could remove foreigners who commit crime. We need to scrap the HRA so that we can once again become a self-governing nation and act in our own best interests.’
His views were echoed by fellow Conservative MP Andrew Rosindell, who said: ‘By sending this man out of their country, the Australians are defending their own national interests better than we are doing. I cannot blame them for wanting to be rid of a pretty horrible individual.
‘I do blame our own previous government for enacting the HRA, making it impossible for us to take the same kind of strong action against these kinds of people, and leaving us being seen as a soft touch.’
The taxpayer now faces a bill for tens of thousands of pounds to provide Cunliffe with housing and benefits, even though he has spent the past 44 years of his life in Australia.

Shed of horrors: Leslie Cunliffe dragged his victim into this shed, raped her and forced her to call her parents begging for money

CONVICTS THE AUSSIES SENT BACK

Cunliffe's deportation echoes the case of convicted pedophile Robert Excell, who after serving 40 years behind bars in Australia was deported back to Britain because of ill health.
Child rapist Excell, who was once deemed so dangerous by Australian authorities they vowed never to release him, had sex offences dating back to 1965, when he raped a seven-year-old boy.
He emigrated to Australia aged ten but never became a citizen.
After his release from a Perth jail in 2005 authorities ruled he was to be deported back to Britain.
A father-of-two, he left Britain in 1967, but never took Australian citizenship after his arrival at the age of 19, allowing the Australian government to deport him after he breached his parole conditions following his release in April.
Described as ‘the worst of beasts’, detectives said Cunliffe’s ‘bizarre and horrendous’ crime was among the worst they have ever witnessed.
Inspired by the film The Silence of the Lambs, he devised a plan in 1999 to extract money from a family living in Geelong, south of Melbourne.
Impersonating a police officer, he ‘arrested’ and handcuffed his victim.
He then drove her to a sound-proofed dungeon where he gagged her and strapped a fake bomb to her. Later he cut off her clothes and raped her.

Scene from the 1990 film The Silence Of The Lambs, starring Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter. After Cunliffe's arrest, a detective said the dungeon where he kept his victim was straight out of the Silence of the Lambs