Ahmadi Family - refused readmission to the UK - 12th September 2002

Click this link to send a letter of support for the family to the Home Office

Justice Scott Baker, today refused to order David Blunkett the Home Secretary to return the Ahmadi Family to the UK. This is a perverse decision in light of his ruling yesterday that the Home Secretary,
acted illegally in deporting the family. Pierre Makhlouf, legal advisor at Hackney Community Law Centre who are representing the family said "The correct course of action would have been to return the family to the situation prior to their unlawful removal from the UK. That is, they should have been returned to the UK so that they could prepare their appeal with their lawyers, and attend their appeal in person. But the judge's Order means the family will effectively have an in-country appeal heard while they are out of the country. It seems the Home Office have effectively gained advantage by their illegal action."

Lawyers are presently agreeing a Consent Order which will outline the package put forward by the Home Office. The Order should ensure that lawyers, doctors and interpreters are funded to go to Germany to take the family's instructions. The Home Office will also have to pay for the video conference facilities for the appeal. The costs will be borne by the public purse.

Pierre Makhlouf said: "In their drive to remove this family the Home Office disregarded the family's right to a human rights appeal from within the UK. The judge made it clear the evidence presented by the
Home Office contained what he described as 'discrepancies'. He said it was relied upon by the Secretary of State, Beverley Hughes MP. The judge said of the evidence in the case:

"It emphasises the care that is required in cases of this type to ensure that a certificate that a human rights claim is manifestly unfounded is made on sound facts."

The Government is intent on increasing the Secretary of State's powers through the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Bill. This will enable him to decide which asylum claims are manifestly
unfounded so as to allow him to remove asylum seekers to their countries of origin without a right of an in-country appeal. The mistakes made by the Secretary of State in this case should send alarm bells ringing. There is no indication the Government have accepted they made a mistake in this case. If the Government takes the same approach with other asylum seekers as they have with the Ahmadi family, it will only be a matter of time before cases arise of asylum seekers removed by the UK Government without a right of appeal who will find themselves being tortured or languishing in jail in their countries of origin.

Deported Ahmadi family wins judicial review

23rd August 2002

On 23rd August the Ahmadi family from Afghanistan who were deported from Britain to Germany a week earlier won a judicial review to be heard at the High Court the week beginning the 10th September to challenge the decision to remove them.

The family's lawyer Pierre Makhlouf, of the Hackney Law Centre in east London, said after the ruling: "We are very pleased... The judge has made a finding that on the material available before him the position of the secretary of state appears to have been incorrect and may have been founded on wrong information about the family's status in Germany.....The full hearing will deal with those issues and should we be successful we would expect the family to be returned to the UK.....It is highly unusual for permission to be granted in these circumstances where the family has already been removed."

The judge refused to order their return to Britain from Germany pending that hearing. So the family are still in Germany. The government had claimed that the family initially applied for refugee status in Germany and that they had liased with the German authorities. The government had told the court that the family already had refugee status and would not be detained. Now in Germany, the family do not have refugee status and have been detained.

Farid Ahmadi, 33, his wife Feriba, 24, and their two young children were flown back to Germany in a specially-chartered jet at a cost to the taxpayer of an estimated £30,000.

The couple had been in Harmondsworth detention centre since police forcibly evicted them from the Ghausia Jamia Mosque at Lye in the West Midlands three weeks ago. They were joined by their children on Friday, who were held in the centre while on a visit to the see their parents.

A high court judge ruling the Home Office could continue to hold the youngsters, who were wards of court but the move was condemned by others. The chief executive of the Immigration Advisory Service, Keith Best, said the Home Office had handled the case with "great insensitivity" by detaining young children, ignoring psychiatric reports and using violence to seize the parents......It seems that the Home Office have decided that this family should be a high-profile case, which I regret because there are human beings involved here," he added.

Elane Heffernan of the committee to defend asylum seekers said: "This is legalised child abuse - that is what it is called when you take children from a place of safety and place them in terror," she said.

"The whole thing is basically a publicity stunt for the government in an attempt to convince the British people that they are in control of asylum."

The Ahmadi family left Afghanistan, where their Kabul home had been bombed and Farid, the father, persecuted, two years ago.

Click here to send a letter of support to the Home Office