A SUDANESE woman who sought safety in Britain after being repeatedly raped and tortured only to be treated “truly disgracefully” by immigration officials won her legal bid in the High Court yesterday.

Mr Justice Collins condemned the “utterly unreasonable and truly disgraceful” treatment of the woman, known only as IKM, and allowed her to claim damages from the government.

The damning ruling comes just days after Home Secretary Theresa May’s rabidly xenophobic anti-immigration and asylum speech at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester.

In it, Ms May said the supposedly “wealthiest, fittest and strongest” people who claimed asylum having already reached Britain — like IKM and 97 per cent of those who seek refuge here — were less deserving than people stuck in refugee camps.

Justice Collins said there was clear medical evidence that IKM had been repeatedly raped and tortured in Sudan.

And she suffered further when she was locked up in an English immigration prison from December 7 2013 to January 2014, the court heard, and had to spend three weeks in hospital to recover.

Ordering damages to be assessed either by the High Court or a county court, the judge said: “Very properly the secretary of state has conceded her detention was unlawful.

“It is well known that she was someone who in all probability had sustained torture and that meant she was someone who should not be detained unless there were very exceptional circumstances. There were none.

“It is, I hope, a unique case because the behaviour of those responsible was utterly unreasonable and truly disgraceful.”

IKM, a non-Arab from Darfur, initially came to England to study but then decided to claim asylum in the Republic of Ireland, believing that she could not claim in England because she possessed a student visa.

Her asylum claim was rejected and her appeal dismissed in 2010.

She made her way back to England via Belfast to an area in north-east England where a local Sudanese community came to her aid.

However, the Home Office ordered that she be dumped in Dublin, pointing to the Dublin Convention asylum rules which state that the country where the claim was lodged bears the responsibility.

But the judge said that was rubbish — IKM’s story was solid and five doctors agreed she was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

“In circumstances such as these, it is difficult to see this as other than a cast-iron case for asylum in this country,” he said.

Ms May “should seriously consider whether it really is humanitarian to require” an unbending following of the rules “rather than adopting a compassionate approach in the particular circumstances of this case.”

David Mitchell, applying for permission to appeal on behalf of the Home Office, claimed the ruling “emasculated” the Dublin Convention.

But Justice Collins dismissed the claim, saying the government had the choice whether or not to stick strictly to it.

Ms May still has the option to go to the appeal court directly.