Read the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal ruling on Chindamo in full

Twelve years after her husband was murdered, Frances Lawrence was back in the media spotlight yesterday.

At 8.10am, she was in the studios of the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, beginning a series of interviews in which she attacked the Human Rights Act for allowing Learco Chindamo to avoid deportation and thus “pick and choose” how he lives his life.

Philip Lawrence’s widow said that modern society derided those who “speak of morality”. She added: “When we speak of the relationship between rights and responsibilities we can be heard in contempt. I see this underlying the growing problem - the plague - of knife crime and violent crime.”

Asked if she had been able to forgive Chindamo, Mrs Lawrence said: “It has never given me any pleasure to see a young man locked away from society, and I have never done anything other than wish him well. I hope that he understands the wrong of what he did, and I hope that he makes something of his life and forms stable, loving relationships.”

But she added that she had “always been given the impression that he would be deported. That was part of the whole justice system for me.”

The mother of four renewed her criticism of the Human Rights Act during an interview with Sky News. “So many of us feel that the Act is now working in the interests of the criminal,” she said, adding that Chindamo “destroyed the most fundamental tenet of the Act, which is the right to life”.

By avoiding deportation he was “able to pick up and manipulate this Act at will in order to allow him to lead the life that he wants to lead”. The law, she said, was “bypassing humanity”.

Mrs Lawrence also had a telephone conversation with Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, officials confirmed last night. Mr Straw heard what he described as her “moving interview” on Today and offered to meet her in person in the near future, an offer that Mrs Lawrence accepted.

Speaking outside her home in Ealing, West London, Mrs Lawrence told reporters that the recent spate of knife attacks on young people suggested that the lessons of her husband’s death had not yet been learnt. “It makes me feel we have not dealt with knife crime whenever I see another stabbing in the papers. We have not yet learnt the importance of valuing every single person.

“A lot of young people . . . have no idea what penalties you might incur if caught carrying a knife. The information is not visible enough and neither are the police. People don’t think they are going to get caught if they carry a knife. We all know we have to examine the root causes of knife crime, but that is a long-term thing and right now we have to make quite sure that a punishment is visible.”

She added: “You get used to the pain, and it is not that it heals, but that you get used to it - something you never wanted or thought you would ever feel.”

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