Great-gran Gretel Gocan is first Windrush exile to return to UK and is greeted with emotional reunion at Gatwick Airport

Gretel, 81, who was stranded in Jamaica for nine years, told The Sun: “I thought I’d never come home.”

The OAP went to the island for her sister’s funeral in 2009 and was wrongly refused entry back.

She flew into Gatwick after the Home Office gave her a new passport following the Windrush scandal which cost Amber Rudd her job as Home Secretary.

Gretel said: “I came to this country so long ago. They invited me in  and suddenly they didn’t want me any more.

“Britain let me down. But I am so happy to see my family again and so grateful to everyone who helped bring me home.”

Her great granddaughter Kia Jones, 17, wiped away tears  as she held her  hand at the airport while grandson Shelumiel, eight, met her for the first time.

Gretel came to Britain in the 1960s and met her late husband Lloyd George on the boat from the West Indies.

But like many of the Windrush generation she never applied for a British passport.

Instead, she had a stamp on her Jamaican passport granting her indefinite leave to remain.

This document was stolen during a burglary at her home in Brixton, South London, in 2006.

She travelled to Jamaica on a new passport in 2009 but  bungling bureaucrats refused her permission to return.

This left Gretel  trapped abroad with no access to health care for conditions including diabetes.

Grandson Aaron Burdon, 30, said: “My nan is sick,  has no money and no home because that was taken away from her.

“She needs  support from the Government. They owe her that at the very least. What they  put her through is disgusting.”




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