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 Sudanese officials 'were allowed to interview Darfuri refugees in UK'
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By Ben Russell, Political Correspondent
Published: 05 November 2007
Ministers have been accused of breaking international rules on the treatment of refugees after Darfuri asylum-seekers were summoned for face-to-face interviews with officials from the regime they were trying to flee.
Campaigners expressed anger after it emerged that an official from the Sudanese embassy was seconded to the Home Office for six weeks to interview nearly 100 people who had fled the war-torn region. They claimed the Home Office had broken UN guidelines and its own internal rules. An investigation by researchers found that Sudanese officials were given personal details of asylum-seekers and allowed to question them during meetings with British immigration officers.
In one case, a man claimed he had been threatened with death by a Sudanese official during his encounter. The Home Office insisted it had followed its guidelines and said external governments were not involved until asylum decisions had been taken. A spokeswoman said Lin Homer, the chief executive of the Border and Immigration Agency, had asked for details of any allegations and "has made a full commitment to investigate and take robust action wherever we find evidence that our policy has not been adhered to".
The United Nations High Commission for Refugees had also raised concerns about the practice "at the highest level" in the Home Office, it emerged yesterday. UN guidelines say that asylum-seekers' personal details should be kept strictly confidential and that contact with their country of origin should not take place "until a final rejection of the asylum claim". But 16 out of 30 asylum-seekers interviewed by researchers said they had been questioned by a Sudanese official even though they were still pursuing claims for asylum.
A report to be published today by the pressure group Waging Peace presents a catalogue of cases in which Darfuri asylum-seekers were confronted by a Sudanese embassy official at Home Office interviews earlier this year. In some cases, the official is alleged to have had details of their names, addresses and families, while in others he appeared to have access to immigration files.
One man, described in the report as Rashid, was interviewed by a Sudanese official in March, despite making a fresh claim for asylum nearly a year earlier. He told researchers that the official asked him about his family and attacks by Janjaweed militia.
He said the official told him: "Why have you come to Britain to say that the Sudanese government and the Janjaweed have killed your family and why are you claiming asylum? I am from the Sudanese government and I will make sure that you are returned to Sudan so that the Government of Sudan kills you." Rashid is understood to still be awaiting a decision on his latest asylum claim.
In another case, a man – named as Mustapha – told how he was questioned in Arabic and told "wherever you go, we will follow you and get you".
Campaigners said that asylum-seekers had been left disturbed and frightened by the encounters and warned that some could be driven underground by fears of retribution from the Sudanese authorities.
Researchers estimate that more than 100 people, many of them in the process of filing asylum claims, underwent "intimidating" interviews.
A Home Office spokesperson said: "This is not a new story. Similar allegations about Sudanese asylum applications were made earlier this year and we made it clear then that our guidelines had been followed.
"We take great care to protect individuals who pass through our asylum system, and have confidence in the quality of our asylum decision-making process. We have a clear policy that external governments do not become involved in the redocumentation process until decisions have been made on cases. The chief executive of the Border and Immigration Agency, Lin Homer, initially asked for details of the dossier on 5 October, and has repeated this request on a number of occasions. As yet she has received no such dossier, nor any explanation as to why it has not been forthcoming. She has made a full commitment to investigate and take robust action wherever we find evidence that our policy has not been adhered to."
Sadiq Abakar, 29: 'I felt I had been handed to the Sudanese authorities by Britain'
Sadiq Abakar has been fighting to stay in Britain for nearly nine years. The electrical worker from Darfur fled his homeland in 1999 after being jailed and tortured for publicising the actions of the Sudanese government and militias.
He was horrified when, arriving at a routine "signing on" meeting with immigration staff, he was ushered into a room with an official from the Sudanese embassy.
The official questioned Mr Abakar in Arabic about his name and where he was from in Sudan – despite the fact that he had an active claim for asylum at the time.
"He said to me 'they are going to send you back home'," Mr Abakar said. "I was really shocked it came from him. I felt I had been handed to them. I felt I had been handed to the Sudanese authorities by the Home Office. I told him my case was not closed," he said.
"I came to this country because of the regime torturing us. We were running from it because we were scared for our lives. We came here because we thought we would be safe and peaceful. But we saw the people we were running from inside the Home Office. The Home Office handed us to them."
Mr Abakar, 29, has made a series of claims for asylum, but says his claim in 2005 was still open when he was summoned to the meeting earlier this year. That claim was later rejected, but he has since made a fresh claim for asylum.
Mr Abakar, a member of the Zaywa tribe, said he was living near the border with Chad and working for an electrical firm in the late 1990s when he became involved in campaigning against killings in Darfur.
He said he was involved in leafleting and campaigning against the violence, but was rounded up and imprisoned.
"They captured us and sent us to jail where we were tortured," he said. "I have been tortured. Really bad things happened."
He said his uncle helped free him from jail and assisted his flight from the country to Britain. But he fears that he would face further persecution if he was returned to Sudan.
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article3129659.ece
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Re: Sudanese officials 'were allowed to interview Darfuri refugees in UK' (Re: Mohamed Omer)
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Leading Article: Inhumanity, hypocrisy, and a policy that shames Britain
The Government's policy for removing asylum-seekers is under the spotlight as never before. We report today chilling allegations of brutality by immigration officers against deportees. And yesterday the Home Office asked the Law Lords to overturn a Court of Appeal ruling concerning the fate of three asylum-seekers from Darfur.
The Asylum and Immigration Tribunal had originally decreed that the three men should be sent back to the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, because there was no likelihood that they would be persecuted on their return. That ruling was subsequently struck down by the Appeal Court, which ruled that, although it agreed with the Home Office that there was no risk of persecution, terrible conditions in the refugee camps around the capital made it inhumane to order their resettlement there.
The Appeal Court was wrong about the risk of persecution. Compelling testimony gathered by the Aegis Trust charity demonstrates that Darfuri asylum-seekers who have been returned to Khartoum have been tortured by the Sudanese security services. The Immigration Minister, Liam Byrne, has ordered a review of UK deportation policy in response to this evidence. But that has not stopped the Government's challenge to the Court of Appeal ruling going ahead. And the Home Office has pointed out that the act of instituting a review is no guarantee that policy will change.
It would be an outrage if the Law Lords were to rule in the Home Office's favour. But the fact that the case has even been brought is already a terrible indictment of the Government. Last week, Gordon Brown stood up at the Labour Party conference in Bournemouth and condemned the Sudanese government for its treatment of the people of Darfur. But, at the same time, his ministers were trying to deliver refugees back into the clutches of that very regime. It is impossible to believe that Mr Brown does not know what is going in his Government, so his refusal to intervene must be taken as evidence that he agrees with what the Home Office is doing. Hypocrisy of this sort is one of the reasons people are so disillusioned with party politics.
No one disputes the facts. Since 2003, some 85,000 people have been killed in Darfur as part of a policy of ethnic cleansing by the Sudanese government. A further 200,000 have died from hunger and disease. More than two million have fled their homes. Khartoum's policy has been described as "genocidal" by the former US Secretary of State, Colin Powell. And yet our own Government persists in attempting to send people back to this nightmare. It is an insult to our intelligence for ministers to argue that Darfuris can be safely deported to Khartoum at the same time as they are condemning the Sudanese government for causing a humanitarian crisis.
It is by no means just Sudanese refugees who are on the receiving end of the Government's hypocrisy. A number of Burmese refugees face the threat of deportation, even as the ruling junta represses brutally mass protests in that country. Last month Mr Brown refused to attend an EU-African summit unless the Zimbabwean President, Robert Mugabe, is barred from attending. But Mr Brown's Home Office has been blithely sending refugees back to Zimbabwe. Asylum-seekers have also been deported to Iraq.
What lies behind this inhumanity? The Government wants to boost the deportation figures so it can win plaudits from the right-wing press for being "tough" on matters of immigration. The treatment of those who have fled here under threat of death in their home country, or merely in search of a better life, shames our government. It also shames Britain.
http://comment.independent.co.uk/leading_articles/article3028690.ece
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Mohamed Omer
Rihab Khalifa
فيس بوك
تويتر
انستقرام
يوتيوب
بنتيريست