• Test case reveals Iraqi government resistance to repatriations
• Home Office officials out of control, claims rights group
- Owen Bowcott
Home Office attempts to forcibly deport thousands of failed Iraqi asylum seekers suffered a setback today when it emerged that Baghdad has objected to any “increase in returns”.
The official refusal surfaced in a high court test case , which ruled that an ethnic Kurd should be released after 21 months in immigration detention because there was no likelihood of his being sent back, even in the “medium term”.
The decision by Mr Justice Langstaff may relate only to a single individual – Soran Ahmed, 22, from Kirkuk – but the judgment has exposed the Iraqi government’s reluctance to receive deportees and the difficulty UK officials have persuading counterparts in Baghdad to cooperate.
An internal Whitehall document, read out to the court, detailed how the UK Border Agency is proposing to fly Iraqi officials into Britain so that they can understand and “buy-in” to the deportation process. It also suggested arranging a UK ministerial visit to Baghdad to stress “the importance of returns to Iraq“.
Ahmed, whose case was supported by the Refugee and Migrant Justice (RMJ) civil rights group, was one of 44 failed Iraqi asylum seekers forcibly put on an abortive charter flight to Baghdad last October with private security guards; Ahmed claimed he was assaulted on board.
In Baghdad, Iraqi interior officials never appeared and the deportees interviewed by an infuriated Iraqi colonel in charge of the airport. “He was antagonistic from the outset,” Mr Justice Langstaff commented.
The colonel accepted 10 deportees and ordered the rest back to London. They did not have the correct Iraqi documentation, he claimed, or were ethnic Kurds who would be in danger in the predominantly Arab city of Baghdad.
There are regular UK deportation flights to the relative peace of the Kurdistan Regional Government area in northern Iraq. Other European countries have been sending failed asylum seekers back to central and southern Iraq. The UK is meeting stiffer resistance to this route.
The United Nations high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR) still opposes repatriations to the central five governorates of Iraq due to the risk of violence. An email from officials in Baghdad to Whitehall last May “disclosed a reluctance to see an increase in the return of Iraqi nationals from the UK to Iraq,” the judge said.
A Foreign Office official who flew to Iraq several times to prepare the way for the flight explained that he met resistance from Iraqi officials to EU documentation. On receipt of the full list of deportees the Iraqis said: “We will see what we can do”.
A report from the conference reviewing the failure of the October flight suggested that the UK Borders Agency should learn from more successful EU deportation programmes and the Iraqi prime minister’s office should be written to for help. The high court heard that the letter has still not been despatched.
It would be unlawful to continue to detain Ahmed, said Langstaff. He was previously imprisoned in Britain for sexual assault and using false documents. There was no prospect of UK flights returning him to Kirkuk via Baghdad this year and the Kurdish Regional Government would not accept him. The judge ordered him to be released under strict bail conditions despite the fact that he posed “some risk” to the public. Bail conditions will be determined at later hearing.
Caroline Slocock, chief executive of RMJ, welcomed the judgment. “”[The flight] should never have left the UK. Home Office staff widened their own criteria on who could safely be on board, largely to fill empty seats at the last moment.
“Not only was the destination of the flight kept secret from those being removed, but it is now clear Iraqi authorities were kept in the dark. The alarming picture emerging is of Home Office officials out of control. Officials needs to get a grip of the problem rather than egg officials on by changes of policy which make it easier for the remove people without proper judicial scrutiny.”
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/feb/19/kurd-asylum-seeker-repatriation-iraq, 19 February 2010