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UK: Home Office makes sure asylum flight
to Kurdistan is full
6.9.2006 |
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London, September
6, -- An airline-style "stand-by" system was
operated by the Home Office to ensure that a
specially chartered deportation flight to Iraq was
full when it left Britain yesterday.
Despite an unprecedented warning from the home
secretary, John Reid, the duty judge at the high
court granted last minute injunctions to five
individual Iraqi Kurds, blocking their forcible
removal on the direct flight to Kurdistan (northern
Iraq) which left RAF Brize Norton yesterday
afternoon.
But all 32 seats on the flight were filled because
immigration officials anticipated the possibility of
legal challenges and detained and served deportation
notices on more people than were due to go.
After the five injunctions were granted yesterday
morning five more people on the reserve list were
put on the flight. Those on board were also
understood to include a number of foreign national
prisoners - the first to be sent back to
Kurdistan-Iraq.
Maeve Sherlock of the Refugee Council said it was
worried about the safety of those sent back: "Not
only has the Home Office made it clear that they are
willing to take the risk of returning someone who
has legal proceedings outstanding, we cannot be sure
that all those returned have had access to legal
advice at all."
The flight was only the second group of Iraqis to be
sent back despite the presence of more than 30,000
failed Iraqi asylum seekers in Britain. Last
November only 20 out of a group of 70 were sent back
because of successful legal challenges.
This time Mr Reid warned the high court judges that
he would no longer defer a deportation if a
last-minute legal challenge was launched unless a
full injunction was granted.
Despite the much tougher stance by Mr Reid, the
Refugee Legal Centre mounted a 48-hour campaign to
ensure that the court heard the case against the
deportations. It persuaded a high court judge
yesterday to grant five out of six of their
applications for an injunction. Five names were
taken off the flight list but five more "standby"
cases who were already in detention were put on the
flight instead. The flight was expected to land at
Erbil International airport in Kurdistan Region of
(Northern Iraq) at 6pm last night.
The Home Office had told the judges that because of
the complexities, costs and practicalities involved
in arranging such charter flights it was essential
they were not disrupted or delayed. As a protest was
held outside the Home Office yesterday, Amnesty
International criticised the return of the asylum
seekers to the "safe area" of the Kurdish Regional
Government.
"Serious human rights violations have been committed
in Kurdish areas in northern Iraq, including by
Kurdish security forces. To assume that people can
be returned to Iraq in safety and with dignity, just
because they are returned to Kurdish areas, could
have grave implications for people's safety," said a
spokesperson.
guardian co.uk
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