Torture Survivor gains 11th hour amnesty from exile
Torture Survivor gains 11th hour amnesty from exile
A 39-year-old Afghan survivor of torture has received an 11th hour reprieve from the Home Office, who were planning to forcibly remove him
from the UK on Christmas Day.
Lawyers
for the man, an asylum seeker accepted by the Home Office to be a torture
survivor, mounted a last-minute legal challenge to try to prevent him from being deported.
They
asked the Home Office to defer the removal until further legal submissions made
on the asylum seeker’s behalf had been considered. Initially the Home Office
did not respond to the request. However, not long after the Guardian published an article on Saturday afternoon about the threatened Christmas Day removal, the asylum seeker’s legal team were notified that the removal planned
for Christmas Day had been deferred.
The
man has lived in the UK for almost 11 years, but was due to be on board a
Turkish Airlines flight to Afghanistan via Istanbul at 4.25pm on 25
December.
The
man was detained at Brook House immigration removal centre near Gatwick airport
on 4 October 2017. The G4S-run centre was recently the subject of a BBC
Panorama exposé, which highlighted alleged abuse of detainees by guards. G4S has launched an investigation into the programme’s findings.
During
the asylum seeker’s detention, a rule 35 assessment was carried out to
ascertain whether he was a survivor of torture or had some other vulnerability.
He told the assessing doctor that he had been tortured and detained in Afghanistan.
The man described being hit with sticks and whips, predominantly on his legs, and being scarred by hot metal on his left knee, ankle and right arm. He also said he had been beaten and hung up. The man said he found it
difficult to be locked up in detention as it reminded him of the torture he had
experienced.
The doctor who assessed him in the detention centre said he had many scars consistent with the forms of torture he had described. The Home Office accepted
the report and considered him to be an adult at risk, but said it planned to
remove him from the UK quickly so he would not have to spend an extended period
of time in detention.
Bell
argues that the man’s life will be in danger if he is returned to his home
province of Laghman, which is very unstable, or to Afghanistan’s capital Kabul,
where the security situation is deteriorating. He said his client’s vulnerability as a survivor of torture made it too dangerous to deport him.
He also said the man was at further risk of being targeted by
anti-government elements in Afghanistan because he was westernized as a result
of being in the UK for almost 11 years. Home Office guidance acknowledges that there is a significant problem throughout Afghanistan with anti-government elements, including the Taliban.
Bell
said it was “deeply concerning and yet sadly unsurprising” that the Home Office
had been planning to remove my client on Christmas Day,” Bell said. “This symbolizes the complete lack of humanity in the government’s approach to refugees.
“The Home Office has taken Christmas, a time for compassion, as
an opportunity to remove someone to a war zone, thinking it would be difficult
to challenge them. They are wrong, on every level.”
He welcomed the Home Office’s last
minute decision to defer the removal. He said: ‘We are happy the Home Office
deferred removal after we issued judicial review proceedings. We were referred
this client’s case at the last minute and without this intervention he would
have been removed on Christmas Day. We believe that our client, a torture survivor, has a strong claim for protection in the UK and are fighting for his right to stay. We now turn our attention to securing his release from detention
at IRC Brook House so he can spend the holiday season at liberty.”
A spokesman for the
Home Office said it does not comment on individual cases.https://www.semperdiamondlodge.com
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