Sent back by Britain. Executed in Darfur
Failed asylum-seeker followed home from airport and shot by Sudan security officials
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Independent Minds
A failed asylum-seeker who returned to Darfur under a government repatriation scheme has been murdered by Sudanese security officers after they followed him home from the airport in Khartoum, The Independent has learnt.
Adam Osman Mohammed, 32, was gunned down in his home in front of his wife and four-year-old son just days after arriving in his village in south Darfur.
The case is to be used by asylum campaigners to counter Home Office attempts to lift the ban on the removal and deportation to Sudan of failed asylum-seekers. Next month, government lawyers are expected to go to court to argue that it is safe to return as many as 3,000 people to Khartoum.
But lawyers for the campaigners will tell the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal that people who are returned to Sudan face imprisonment, torture and death. Mr Mohammed, a non-Arab Darfuri, came to Britain in 2005 seeking sanctuary from persecution in Sudan, where he said his life was in danger. The village where he was a farmer had been raided twice by the Janjaweed, the ethnic Arab militia, forcing him and his wife and child to flee their home.
His family in Britain told The Independent that Mr Mohammed witnessed many villagers being killed and became separated from his wife during a second attack on the village a few weeks later. He escaped to Chad before making his way to the UK in 2005.
But last year his appeal for asylum was finally turned down and he was told that he faced deportation. In August last year he was flown to Khartoum under the Home Office's assisted voluntary return programme, in which refugees are paid to go back to their country of origin. He stayed in Khartoum for a few months and then, when he believed it was safe, he travelled to Darfur to be reunited with his family.
Mohamed Elzaki Obubeker, Mr Mohammed's cousin and chairman of the Darfur Union in the UK, said: "The government security forces had followed him to another village, Calgoo, where his wife and child had sought help. They came to the village to find him and then targeted him. They shot him in front of his wife and son."
Waging Peace, the human rights campaign group which is to bring Mr Mohammed's case to the attention of the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal in April, said it deplored any attempt to lift the ban on returning non-Arab Darfuris to Sudan. Louise Roland-Gosselin, the group's director, said: "We are deeply concerned by what has happened to Adam and many like him.
"The Government still wants to send back Darfuri asylum-seekers. But it is difficult to understand on what basis the Government is making this decision. The International Criminal Court has issued a warrant for the arrest of Sudan's President, Omar al-Bashir, over murders committed during the genocide. It shows just how out of touch the Home Office is with the reality taking place in Khartoum if it thinks it's safe to send people back to a country where there is clear evidence of genocide."
Amnesty International's UK refugee programme director, Jan Shaw, said yesterday: "Darfur is still incredibly dangerous. A climate of insecurity prevails and human rights abusers act with impunity. Women are still exposed to rape and other civilians are still being murdered or forced to flee their homes. Even in Khartoum we have concerns that Darfuris may be at risk of persecution. No one should be removed to Sudan at the present time.
"The UK should also treat refused asylum-seekers humanely when they have come to the UK seeking sanctuary. People from Sudan have been refused asylum here, but at present they can't be removed. Yet in most cases this means that all their support is cut off and they could be left destitute on the streets with nothing. It's tragic if some people then get so desperate that they return to Sudan despite the risks to their safety."
Between 2,000 and 3,000 Darfuris living in the United Kingdom are at risk of removal to Sudan.
Mr Obubeker added: "The government suspects everyone who returns from the United Kingdom as being anti-government, whether it is true or not. They regard them as enemies of the state. What happened to my cousin is a terrible thing to have happened to someone who thought he had escaped to a country for safety. He wanted to live in Britain because he knew it was too dangerous for him to live in Darfur. But despite making claims for asylum, his case was rejected. He became even more sad when he found out that his asylum case was lost.
"He hadn't made many friends in Birmingham and he started to think about his wife and son. It is a tragedy because all he wanted was a new life in this country – and for that he is dead."
Mr Mohammed spent most of his time in Britain living in Perry Barr, Birmingham, where his family said he found it difficult to integrate with the community.
Home Office guidance for caseworkers deciding asylum claims brought by Darfuris makes it clear that the Government believes it is safe to return people to Khartoum. The guidance states: "The fact that a returnee has unsuccessfully sought international protection in the United Kingdom is likely to be known to the Sudanese authorities... However, a person will not as such be at real risk on return to Khartoum, either at the airport or subsequently, simply because he or she is an involuntary returnee of Sudanese nationality."
A UK Border Agency spokesman said: "We consider every asylum application with the utmost care and, crucially, there is oversight from the independent courts. We are continuing to monitor the situation in Sudan, and in July last year we took the decision to stop returning non-Arab Darfuris until the courts decided it was safe to do so."
Trouble spots: Voluntary returns
Afghanistan
Britain stopped deporting Afghan refugees in 1995 – failed asylum-seekers were granted "exceptional leave to remain". The rules changed after the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and end of Taliban rule; a voluntary assisted return programme began in 2003 and single claimants were offered £600 to go back.
Iraq
Iraqis went back to northern Iraq under the voluntary scheme from 2003 and have been offered deals to go back to Baghdad. Under the terms, those returning to Iraq sign a waiver releasing the International Organisation for Migration from any responsibility for or liability towards them.
Zimbabwe
In 2006, 200 failed asylum-seekers voluntarily returned to Zimbabwe. Last year, the Government stopped forced returns but Zimbabweans can still take advantage of the voluntary programme to return.
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Comments
If the UK allows every asylum seeker to stay (over 1 million illegal immigrants currently in the UK, not to mention the countless rogue asylum seekers) then they will continue to bleed the benefit system and NHS dry. Public money will continue to be banded about to the detriment of the long suffering tax payer, and unfortunately the anger amongst britons will continue to grow, and i have no doubt this will lead to civil unrest in the not too distant future. Events last week clearly show that Britons are increasingly frustrated with the liberties that are afforded to individuals and groups that have taken advantage of a system that provides, provides, provides.
The governemnt needs to change its policy to protect a benefit / asylum system to adapt to a social environment that has evolved. Why not repatriate illigal immigrants? After all, they are in the country illegally. Why not expel individuals and groups that do not have the UK's interests at heart? Why not?
In Australia (my country) government was not even interested in counting, and this is odd, as you would think that if the govt was making errors in life-or-death situations, it would want to be aware of it. Or if it was getting them right, it would want to publicise that. It was left to one of our universities to try to contact people repatriated, and to follow them up.
The uni found many asylum seekers deported from Australia, had subsequently been killed, others injured/arrested.
Important to publish these cases, as the government has one chance to get it right, and the consequences of it making mistakes, can be death. These are not easy areas, I have no easy solutions, but the figures, at least, ought to be known.
i would like to ask why Sudanese President has been accused by killing more than 200,000
people in Dar fur?. Is this not clear evidence for UK.Border to stop sending Sudanese
Asylum who fled from genocide to be settle in this country.
goodbye.
This is a little tiny country that is saturated with human beings.
Official figures ONS for UK population at last census...60 M
Figures from a more reliable source,based on consumption...75 M
Britain has a debt to GDP ratio of 150%...I could go on,and on.
Outside of the heavily manipulated media, Most of the reliable financial sites are referring to Britain as 'bankrupt'...I suggest you seek them out, and digest what is really happening in this country.
Nobody deplores the murder of this person more than I-But sadly this sort of thing happens every minute somewhere in the world.
Surely even the most altruistic dreamer out there, must ask themselves why these people always make a beeline for Britain,bypassing many 'safe' havens on the way.
It is pure selfishness to expect the rest of us to think your way-and let in just about everyone who wants to domicile themselves on this little bunch of rocks.
Thank God for someone here like Jimjamja who can think dispassionately about these things.
As He/she has said-why don't you set up your own charity with your own wages if you feel so strong about this sort of thing.
Don't be stealing my money,or the taxes of millions of others-or our space for that matter- to massage your consciences.
The ruination of the former colonies was done by the indigenous population after the British left.
Africa is being returned to the Stone Age, one country after another by the unlimited capacity for crime, corruption, cruelty and incompetence of Africans.
The only times any African country has been efficiently run was when it was run by European colonists.
I defy anyone to show an illustration of an efficiently run African country that was or is run by Africans.
Yet again the Independent is attempting emotional blackmail to get more immigration to the UK and to let any aylum seekers in. So that will encourage more, Then more, then more to the most overcrowded country in Europe. Life in the UK would be way better with 5 million fewer people - a professional man could afford to buy a house then. But oh o, well-off property owning Independent hacks are sitting pretty and just want others to suffer because of lax immigration rules. Hypocrites.
We cannot take everyone - even though so many are poor and starving (stopping thyem all breeding would be where to start, not a more lenient asylum and immigration poilcy...Are you NUTS?). And do not use the argument about how people who came here did well - some did, some were criminals - but that is no justiofication for any further immigration and is a clear false argument.
Some people need to grow up - we are amanaging a country here, not a charity.
Your country is not full. 70% of it is empty and owned by 1% of your Aristocrats whom you work like a slave and give all of your money back to them in taxes and bills. Don't be too sure your country will be better off without immigrants! There is already one tiny group of immigrant who make decisions in your lovely country, why not dare mention them? You owe much more to those immigrants whose countries you colonised and ravaged for centuries and aBritain got rich thanks to the gold and diamond you nicked from them. You left them in ruins like what's happening in Zimbabwe and the Sudan. You've been in Africa for 400 years and left it in ruins. Some of the immigrants have been here for 10 years and they have another 390 years to stay here. Is that OK with you?
We/I need young people coming to this land; there are more and more of us to be helped/worked for, as I did for others.
Thank your gods for those lovely people that were from "other countries" while I spent, a first time spell in the fine NHS Hospital.
Horrible the actual placing an Asylum Seeker on transport for certain death.
Asylum seekers are not "illegal".
Britain is not overcrowded.
The good side of the Govt is that Ministers have visited Darfur to see for themselves.
The bad side is that the Border Agency and the Home Office have imposed upon themselves an agenda and mindset of not believing the abuse and torture claims of asylum seekers (what do they know about it?) and have also imposed upon themselves targets for stopping entry and sending victims back "home".
Refused asylum seekers are destitute - the idea is to force them to "volunteer" to go "home".
We detain very many people (including many children) for very long periods.
It is a heartless system. It is inefficient. It does not work.
Stopping asylum seekers from working is crazy, as they have much to contribute (and want to).
Note that the vast majority of displaced people remain in the continent where the trouble is - see poor Chad in respect of Sudan.
The answer is resolution of conflicts in the trouble zones - peace, justice, democracy.
Maybe Gordon hasn't considered this. It could be a growth industry for the country, execute "asylum seekers" and other illegals and send their country the bill.
Then again, had this 'fugee stopped at the first safe country he entered, he may not have been sent back. But no, he had to come to Britain, where the streets are paved with free houses, benefits and as many white women as you can handle. I'd like to say I feel sorry for the little ba$tard. But I don't.
Immigrants have taught you how to eat decent healthy food and not just boiled fish and chips!
All the problems lie with the poor standards of operation of various governmental depts, we have ended up with too many economic migrants here for the cash, and so now send back real refugees.
I really do wonder what has happened to this place, between the war monger blair and the idiot brown the country has turned into a joke
Given the preponderance of newpapers everywhere to "run away with the truth", this story should be treated as nothing more than the Independent trotting out the same old line. THis paper has no cognition of the charitable and philanthropic nature of this country. The UK pro rata provides more in aid and charity than other country. It also plays host to more refugees (per KM2) than any other. Fuelling alarmism and hatred is someting the Independent would be well advised to leave alone.
All the problems lie with the poor standards of operation of various governmental depts, we have ended up with too many economic migrants here for the cash, and so now send back real refugees.
I really do wonder what has happened to this place, between the war monger blair and the idiot brown the country has turned into a joke.
Whilst we can not help everyone - we should help the deserving. unfortunatley we have student union politicians trying to do a grown ups job. Because they see immigration as vote loser now labour are backtracking like only they can on immigration - and here is a real result of their incompetence.
IT is too damned late, no one can stop the assaults on our so called civilized shores. Whether in Darfur or here in the UK, no one appears to be safe anymore.
1. As others have stated, African Countries were left by their colonial masters politically stable, economically viable and in considerably better shape than before they had been colonised. The morass that is sub-Saharan Africa is, sadly, of the Africans own doing. Still, these rather inconvenient facts shouldn't let left-wingers from engaging in their "have an opposing view and you're a racist" rant;
2. Many "asylum seekers" appear to routinely travel across numerous safe countries in order to reach Britain, why? Irrespective as to whether they have suffered or were likely to within their home nation, many of these individuals are motivated by financial considerations and are aware that claiming asylum bypasses the potential host nation's immigration controls; hardly fair to the honest applicant;
3. Darfur is a disgrace, but it is an African problem of Africa's own making and thus should be one whose answer lies within Africa;
4. Finally, we are a crowded nation and our infrastructure is already creaking, our society has welcomed people of different cultures and been foolish enough to allow minority cultures to be given equal footing with the majority. The result......how about 7/7 for starters.
If this story is true, it is very sad for the individuals concerned, but make no mistake (albeit deluded lefties will choose to do so), the fault lies entirely with Sudan, not with Britain.
3.