A German man has been unable to find employment for the last four years after having his ID card stolen during a trip to London and waking up with a lengthy criminal record to his name.
24-year-old Rami Battikh’s nightmare began five years ago, following a short holiday in London in 2019. He had traveled to the UK with his passport and ID card, but at one point realized that he no longer had the latter. He assumed that he had lost it or had it stolen but didn’t think much of it and used the passport to return to Germany, where he simply applied for another ID card. The young man carried on with his life, finished his studies, and after completing his vocational apprenticeship at Vodafone finance in Bonn, he was offered a job opportunity at the corporation and another one with the local tax office. Rami had a brilliant career in front of him, but before he could make up his mind about what job offer to accept, both opportunities evaporated because a routine check revealed that he had a criminal record in the UK.
Photo: generic photo (Unsplash)
“I couldn’t believe it,” Battikh recalls. “I told my employers that it was not true that for sure it was not me, that I had proof I wasn’t in the UK at that time as I was in Tunisia at the time and had stamps on my passport to prove it. But they just said they couldn’t just take my word over a police record.”
Rami Battikh’s bizarre criminal record can be traced back to 2021, when someone fraudulently using his ID was jailed by Wood Green Crown Court in London for 18 months over a number of offenses, including driving without a licence or insurance, fraud by false representation, and possession of a false or improperly obtained identity document.
Battikh hired a solicitor in the UK to try and remedy the situation, and although the mixup was first acknowledged by a Wood Green Crown Court and their successor, the UK Metropolitan Police Department did not erase his criminal record. To make matters worse, 14 months later, more crimes were added to his criminal record, including possession of a knife in a public place.
“I was in disbelief, I thought ‘what is wrong with the UK?’ They have already said I am not the criminal and my ID was stolen because the court confirmed this. But why can they not delete my name from the record? I was really upset,” the 24-year-old told The Guardian newspaper.
Desperate to have his UK criminal record erased, Rami Battikh has written to the Met, which appears to be the only authority with the power to modify the online database, offering to provide DNA or fingerprints which he had taken at a German police station to prove that he was not the person who had committed the offences in his criminal record.
“This fraud destroys my life. I can’t get any jobs. Please, if you need I will give you my fingerprints, a hair strand … I can’t live like this any more. I am innocent, and I never did any of those criminal acts,” the young man pleaded.
Unable to find anyone willing to hire him with a criminal record, Rami has had to sell his car to cover bills and is sharing his nightmarish experience because he doesn’t know what else to do. Unfortunately, the Met has yet to fix its blunder and give Battikh his life back.
“We are aware of this case and we continue to work with other agencies to progress this with a view to having the situation rectified,” the Met said in a recent statement on the issue. “We understand that the length of time this has taken has added to the concern and upset, but aim to provide an update to the applicant in the near future.”
