Day of reckoning for 'death by deportation' Algerian

An Algerian former policeman married to a British woman is today being deported to face what circumstances his friends fear could lead to his death.

Hocine Dib, 29, who has lived in Britain for the last two years, was due to be deported by British immigration authorities at 6am today on the grounds that he is an illegal immigrant. His pleas for political asylum have been ignored, despite mass murder and terror in his home country.

In the past three years, 40,000 people have been killed in Algeria; some 50 people are murdered every night. The GIA (Armed Islamic Group) in Algeria specifically targets policemen, journalists and people with links to the West. The authorities have killed in cold blood people they suspect of supporting the fundamentalists.

Mr Dib's wife, Patti, a teacher, said after visiting him yesterday in Rochester prison: "I now have the choice between losing my husband or leaving my mother behind to live in a country the Home Office says is too dangerous for Britons to visit.

Mr Dib arrived in Britain in September 1993 on a tourist visa and applied for asylum. The couple married a year later. The Home Office said that because he arrived as a tourist and then claimed asylum he was automatically an illegal immigrant.

Mrs Dib said: "The extremists are still dangerous. He only joined the police because he liked detective work. People arrive in Algiers and don't even make it through customs."

The couple's lawyer is now considering applying for a judicial review.

t A Home Office minister yesterday defended plans to send a democracy activist back to Nigeria. Abiodun Igbiuidu claims he faces persecution and torture at home, where nine human rights campaigners, including the writer Ken Saro-Wiwa, were executed last month. Ann Widdecombe, the Immigration Minister, said: "Obviously we simply can't say that anyone in Nigeria can just come here in a blanket way."