|
UK: Kurdish father-to-be set for
deportation to Iraqi Kurdistan
26.4.2008
|
|
|
|
April
26, 2008
LONDON, -- A Kurdish asylum seeker who has
been living in Britain for eight years and whose
wife is expecting their first baby is due to be
deported on Friday.
Mouriad Yousef, 25, who has been held at Colnbrook
immigration detention centre in west London despite
being on medication for depression, told the
Guardian he was due to be put on a Royal Jordanian
Airlines plane at Heathrow airport at 5pm Friday.
Yousef is likely to follow the route taken by an
increasing number of Iraqis who have been refused
permission to remain in Britain despite the
continuing violence in their native country. |
Colnbrook immigration removal centre |
After being flown to the Jordanian capital, Amman,
he will be transferred to a regional flight that
will take him on to either Baghdad or the northern
Kurdish city of Erbil, the Iraqi Kurdistan's
capital, from which he fled in 2000.
Yousef, who studied law at Wolverhampton University,
told the Guardian Thursday: "I'm terrified of going
back. The Home Office does not care about anything.
They say I am no longer in danger but how do they
know? I have been in Britain for eight years and I
was reporting [to a police station] every week."
He was speaking shortly after saying goodbye to his
wife,www.ekurd.net
Serwa, at a final
meeting in the detention centre.
Serwa is due to give birth on July 7. They met in
London and lived together in Acton after marrying in
2004. She has been given indefinite leave to remain
in the UK, but he has been ordered to leave.
She said: "We have been married for four years and
this will be our first child. He has no one in Iraq:
no friends, no family. He is ill. Why are they
sending him away when I need my husband?"
Last month, in the UK's largest return operation, 50
Kurds were put on a charter flight from Stansted
airport to Erbil. There were claims later that Iraqi
security officers boarded the plane when it landed
and beat those refugees who refused to leave the
aircraft.
Most of the returns to Iraq have been to the
northern Kurdish region, which has suffered less
violence than other areas. But Dashty Jamal, of the
Federation of Iraqi Refugees, said one asylum seeker
forcibly returned to Iraq had been killed in a car
bomb in the city of Kirkuk.
More than 160 Kurdish refugees have been deported so
far, despite claims by human rights groups that the
country is not safe for civilians. When deportation
flights to Erbil first began, returned asylum
seekers were told to wear flak jackets as they flew
over Iraq.
Yousef was convicted while in Britain of forgery for
possessing a false ID document. His lawyers said he
had needed to work to raise money for his marriage
and only obtained the document - a forged French
passport - to enable him to work.
A UK Borders Agency spokesman said: "The UK Border
Agency is committed to removing those who break our
rules. Last year we removed the equivalent of one
person every eight minutes.
"The government has made it clear that it will take
a robust approach to removing people from the
country. While it is preferable for those with no
right to remain in the United Kingdom to return home
voluntarily, it is regrettable that not all choose
to do so and in those circumstances it may be
necessary to enforce removal."
Copyright, respective author or news agency,
guardian co.uk
Top |
Kurd Net
does not take credit for and is not responsible for the content of news
information on this page
|
® 