Italian convicted of teenage attempted murder deported after UK drug conviction

Jamal Tonelli, an Italian national convicted of attempting to murder a jogger in Italy when he was 15, has been deported from the UK after serving a prison sentence for later offences. His case has drawn attention to how he came to live in Britain after being released early from an Italian youth institution, and to the government’s policy of deporting foreign offenders.

Tonelli was sentenced in Italy to six years and eight months, later reduced to five years on appeal, but a bureaucratic error led to his release after less than a year. In the UK he was convicted of driving offences in April 2025, then jailed for two years in November after pleading guilty to possessing crack cocaine, heroin and a knife. The Home Office says nearly 12,000 foreign criminals have been returned or deported in the two years since the last election, a 41% rise on the previous two-year period.