Asylum seeker jailed for benefits swindle

Amina Muse, 38, also conned Swedish authorities out of 50,000, spending the money on luxury living and holidays in Africa.

While she claimed asylum in the UK based on "appalling atrocities" committed against her in Somalia, investigators found she was living in Sweden at the time.

Handing her a four-and-a-half-year prison term at Harrow Crown Court, in north London, Judge Stephen Holt told her: "One of the most serious aspects of this case is your cynical, dishonest manipulation of the whole system of asylum."

Muse, a mother of six, who also went by the name of Ayan Abdulle, sought refuge in Britain after moving to Sweden in 1995 where she was granted citizenship and enjoyed a "comfortable" life.

On her UK asylum application, disclosed yesterday, she claimed militiamen stormed and looted her family home in war-torn Somalia on December 1, 1998, because she was a member of a minority group.

But investigators, who suspect Muse to be of Kenyan descent, found this to be the date on which she gave birth to a child in Sweden.

Between June 2004 and May 2010, Muse, from North Circular Road, Neasden, north-west London, claimed a total of 261,358.14 in income support, disability living allowance for one of her children and carer's allowance for herself. This included child benefit, child tax credits and housing benefit from various local authorities.

She received a total of 112,985.51 from the borough of Camden where she lived in a four-bedroom property.

Condemning her deceit, Judge Holt said: "In my view it was fraud from the outset. It was professionally planned."