An Eastern European mum jailed for an immigration scam will get £25,000 of taxpayers' cash after a judge found she was "unlawfully detained" following her sentence.

The 31-year-old moved to the UK in 2014 and lived in Bolton, but faced deportation the following year after she was jailed for a sham marriage scam.

She was kept locked up in an immigration detention centre, but has now won damages after a judge heard evidence she is a "torture" victim.

Mrs Justice Lang said the authorities did not properly consider evidence of the alleged torture and so five months of her detention was "unlawful".

The London court heard she was caught out as she arrived at a registry office to marry a Nigerian she had never met.

She was sentenced in February last year and moved to an immigration centre at the end of her sentence.

She was eventually released after being given temporary permission to stay in the UK in March.

The judge said her detention was initially justified, but became unlawful when the Home Office rejected her claims of "torture" in October last year.

The woman had complained while locked up that she feared being returned to her home country, because her husband there was a dangerous and violent man.

She told of serious assaults, including having her teeth punched out, a beating with a stick and her earrings torn from her ears.

However, the Home Office said a report from a doctor who had examined and spoke with the woman was not "independent evidence of torture".

But the judge said the doctor had provided a detailed description of "systematic, repeated assaults", backed up by evidence of scars and other bodily injuries.

"The report did provide corroboration for her account and did constitute independent evidence of torture..." said the judge.

She continued: "Only 'exceptional circumstances' would have justified continued detention, and no such exceptional circumstances existed in this case.

"The nature and degree of her previous offending, and the level of risk which she represented, would not, in my view, have justified continued detention.

"In conclusion, I find that she was unlawfully detained from 12 October 2015 to 4 March 2016."