Afghans to be expelled today despite medical warning

An Afghan family seized in a dawn raid on a mosque face deportation today despite a last-minute medical report stating that the move would harm their children.

A child psychologist who examined Farid and Feriba Ahmadi's two children at Harmondsworth detention centre in west London yesterday said deportation would cause them permanent damage, according to campaigners.

But the Home Office is expected to deport them to Germany, where they first arrived after fleeing Afghanistan in 2000. They say they were persecuted and tortured by the Taliban.

Feriba Ahmadi, 24, said yesterday she was "frightened and depressed" at the prospect of returning to Germany and from there to Afghanistan. The family claim they left Germany because they were subjected to racism.

She said: "We don't know if we will be able to stay in Germany or will be sent back to Afghanistan. They say it is safe in Afghanistan, but I don't believe it is safe. They are still fighting. I am very worried."

The Ahmadis' solicitor, Pierre Makhlouf, was seeking a judicial review of the deportation order last night.

Elane Heffernan, of the Committee to Defend Asylum Seekers, said protesters would be "throwing themselves under plane wheels" to prevent the family leaving. And Soraya Walton, who took in the Ahmadis' children before the raid on the mosque in Lye, West Midlands, called for anyone who recognised them on a plane today to take action to stop it taking off.

Ms Heffernan said the child psychologist's report had confirmed campaigners' feelings that the children would be badly damaged by being moved again and that Mrs Ahmadi's medical condition would deteriorate. She has suffered two breakdowns.

She said: "The report has been ignored by the Home Office. I have never known anything like this to happen before. "

The Home Office said they were being sent back to Germany under international law.