Dawn raid at the mosque outrages community as Afghan family that sought sanctuary is evicted

The first sound heard by Farid and Feriba Ahmadi when they woke yesterday in the mosque where they had sought sanctuary was the voice of an imam calling the small Muslim community of Lye to prayer.

After the 30 worshippers completed their devotions at 5am the early morning quiet settled again over the converted church building just off the main street of the small town on the edge of the West Midlands conurbation.

Just over half an hour later the peace of the Ghausia mosque was shattered by riot police breaking down a side door with a metal battering ram to reach the couple, who were sheltering in a 12ft by 15ft room upstairs.

The 12 police officers and six immigration officials had a warrant from Solihull magistrates authorising them to use force to arrest Farid and Feriba, who fled Taliban-ruled Afghanistan two years ago and spent their life savings to travel to England in search of a safer life for them and their two children.

As it was, once the police had smashed down the door and walked through the main prayer hall to reach the couple, no force was needed. Within 10 minutes, Farid, aged 33, was taken out with his head bowed and escorted into a police van with his visibly distressed 23-year-old wife.

Paul Rowlands, a family friend and one of a group of campaigners who witnessed the raid, criticised the show of force. He said: "It was completely compassionless. It was as though they were arresting murderers."

Last night, solicitors for the Ahmadis, who were being held near Heathrow, gained the right to a second judicial review, preventing the family from being ejected from the country for another seven days until their case is heard by a High Court judge.

It was unclear when they will be reunited with their children, Hadia, six, and Seear, four, who had been taken away from the mosque several days earlier to stay with Mr Rowlands and his partner, Soraya Walton. Yesterday the only sign of the children's presence at the mosque was a Postman Pat toy and some children's cough medicine amid the detritus left by a hurried departure. Their whereabouts last night were unknown.

The police raid has outraged the whole community in Lye, where a Muslim population of 3,000 mingles happily with the predominantly white population numbering some 12,000.

Once a village, Lye is now submerged in the urban sprawl of the Black Country, but it retains a close-knit community, which had taken the Ahmadis to its heart since they arrived in January last year. Hadia and Seear attended the local Wollescote School, where Hadia was inseparable from her best friend and had already adopted the unmistakable Black Country accent. Feriba wanted to train to be a nurse and Farid hoped eventually to find work as a motor mechanic.

The family moved into the mosque last month after their application for asylum failed and a High Court judge ruled they should return to Germany, which was their first port of call in Europe after leaving Kabul, where Mr Ahmadi says he was tortured by the Taliban.

Their escape from Afghanistan took them first to Turkey, from where they were sent to Kiev, despite speaking no Russian. After two weeks in the city they paid for a train journey that they were told would take them to England. Instead, it stopped in Munich, where they were arrested and detained in a processing centre.

Jerry Langford, one of many Lye residents campaigning for the family to stay, said they decided to escape the camp after suffering racial and religious abuse ­ a claim that is disputed by the Home Office.

They finally arrived in England in January last year when they were caught being smuggled in the back of a lorry, and given a home in Lye temporarily before being returned to Germany. They remained in Britain and a 17-month campaign was mounted against the deportation.

Mr Langford, who was one of six campaigners in the mosque during the eviction, said the style of the operation risked creating tension in a community that has had no racial problems since the 1970s.

"This family have made every effort to learn English and to integrate into the local community. We have got a town here where Muslim, Christian and Hindu kids go to school together and their families live in the same street. There is no segregation here at all. It isn't somewhere like Bradford or Oldham," he said.

"Instead of pillorying these people, the Government should be patting them on the back and saying they are an example of how to build a better society. Instead of that, they are fuelling the kind of nonsense propagated by the BNP."

His fears that the dawn raid on a mosque would jeopardise years of good community relations were echoed all along Lye's high street. As news of the raid spread, a group of about 20 Muslim youths gathered outside the mosque, muttering that they would meet force with force.A larger group then moved to the nearby police station, where there was a stand-off with officers before the crowd dispersed.

Even the most gentle of the mosque's leaders could not disguise their anger that police and immigration officials had stormed into a place of worship, even if they did cover their feet and even if female officers did wear headscarves.

"This is a house of God," said the treasurer, Haji Khadim Hussain. "The whole community, British, Christian, Muslim, feels that what they have done is bad. If they had talked to us maybe there could have been a better arrangement, but they didn't. They may have covered their shoes but if you do not take your shoes off in a house of God you are not showing respect."

The Home Office rejects all suggestions that officials behaved insensitively and stresses that the Ahmadis were "unlawfully at large" in Britain.

"The operation was conducted with the utmost respect and sensitivity towards the family, especially given the particular surroundings of where the family were residing at the time," a spokesman said.