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UK: An Iraqi Kurd asylum seeker is facing
forcible deportation for the second time this year
18.9.2007
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September
18, 2007
UK, -- An Iraqi Kurd asylum seeker is facing
forcible removal from Britain for the second time
this year.
Mohammed Abdul Rahman, a 31-year-old taxi driver who
is being held at Campsfield House detention centre,
has pledged to return to the UK. His determination
to re-enter Britain by any means illustrates the
extreme desperation of Kurdish asylum seekers
fearful of returning to northern Iraq - a region
increasingly scarred by car bombs, threatened by
civil war and now in the grip of a cholera outbreak.
His case also highlights the pressure on immigration
controls in Europe. The Home Office does not keep
records of what it terms "re-removals".
Mr Rahman first came to Britain in December 2000 and
lived for six years in Liverpool, working in
factories. A failed asylum seeker, he was detained
earlier this year and held for 25 days in Doncaster.
He was then put on a charter flight from RAF Brize
Norton and sent back to Erbil, the regional capital
of Kurdistan (northern Iraq).
The Kurdistan region, relatively calm since the
US-led liberation in 2003, is the only part of Iraq
to which the government is deporting failed asylum
seekers.
Mr Rahman told the Guardian: "I came back to Britain
on August 6. I was arrested in a hotel in Dover. The
judge has said I will have to go back again because
of the immigration laws.
"My family is in Kirkuk but the city is not safe.
There are car bombs there and people who will kill
me." He says he has been targeted in a tribal feud.
"I don't want to go back to my country. [If I am
sent away again] I will come back to this country."
Mr Rahman has been given a ticket to Amman in Jordan
on October 17. He will then be transferred to
Kurdistan region (northern Iraq).
A Home Office spokesman said: "We don't comment on
individual cases but the government has made it
clear that it takes a robust approach to removing
people from this country where they have no legal
right to be here."
An estimated 4 million Iraqis have fled. Most are in
Syria, Jordan and Turkey.
guardian co.uk
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