‘My six-year-old still thinks her daddy is coming home’: Wife of deported Afghan 'killed by Taliban' speaks out

Exclusive: ‘It’s not just about us. It’s about all the people they’re sending back. We’re suffering today, tomorrow it might be someone else’

Samira Fazlie sits in her living room clutching old photo albums, flicking slowly through family pictures. She pauses every now and then. Most of the photos are of her husband and their children.

“He loved them so much,” says the 34-year-old. “They miss him. My six-year-old still thinks her daddy is coming home. I haven’t worked out how to tell her yet.”

It is a week since Samira found out her husband Zainadin Fazlie had been killed in Afghanistan, two years after he was deported from the UK.

With tears streaming from her eyes, she recalls the moment she discovered what had happened: “I was checking my Facebook and I saw a picture of him with his cousin, with words saying someone had died.

“I thought it was one if his relatives, but at the end of the message I read my husband’s name. I was so shocked.

“Then I saw another picture they were posting – of his dead body. I was sitting in my bedroom with my youngest beside me. I was crying. I couldn’t control myself.

“My oldest son, who is 16, came into the room and asked why I was crying. I didn’t know what to say to him. I said your dad is no more, they killed him. And straight away he started crying.

“He put his head on my feet and he was saying no mum, I can’t believe that. I can’t believe my dad is not going to come back.”

Zainadin Fazlie arrived in the UK in 2000 after the Taliban gained control of his home town in Maidan Wardak province. He was granted indefinite leave to remain and had four children now aged 16, 13, six and three.

But the 47-year-old was issued a deportation notice in 2015 after receiving an eight-week suspended sentence for a violent offence.

Due to a recent change in the law, he was unable to exercise his right to appeal in the UK and was removed to Afghanistan in April 2016, despite threats to his life.

Samira​ says her husband had been suffering with depression and poor mental health when he committed the offence prior to his detention and deportation.

“He wasn’t a killer, he wasn’t a drug dealer. He had a depression problem he was seeing a doctor about. When he was depressed, he was doing bad things. Then after he apologised. He needed help. But they sentenced him to death,” she says.

After his status was revoked, Samira would accompany her husband when he went to sign on with the Home Office. One time, shortly after she had a caesarean and gave birth to their fourth child, Zainadin persuaded her not to go with him and instead stay at home and rest with the baby.

Little did she know that was the last time he would set foot in their home.

“I was waiting and waiting for him to come back. He eventually called me in the evening and said they weren’t going to let him leave. They were going to detain him and then deport him,” she recalls.

“I was crying. He was telling me not to cry. He said he would come out soon and we would start again.

“I went to see him every two weeks. We had to get the train. When I didn’t bring the kids, he would be so sad not to see them.”

Despite efforts to halt the deportation, Zainadin​ was sent to the Afghan capital Kabul. With no connections there and a faltering economy, he struggled to find work and decided to return to his home town.

Samira Fazlie said she had ‘begged’ the UK government and the courts not to deport her husband, who she describes as the ‘love of her life’ (Samira Fazlie)

Samira says that once he was there, it became difficult to maintain contact. She says he would tell her that if he came out from where he was, they were “going to kill him”.

The family had an appeal hearing set for 28 September to bring him back, which their solicitor said had a “good chance” of being successful. But it was too late.

Now a single parent with four children, Samira says she worries about the future.

“I’m struggling right now with my kids. I don’t know how to tell my daughter he lost his life. She’s waiting for her daddy to come take her to school on his shoulders again,” she says.

“She was depressed after they deported him. A few months ago, she spoke with him on the phone. He was telling her he was going to be back to see her soon.”

Samira explains that while she misses her husband desperately, describing him as the “love of her life”, her biggest concern is her children – and the prospect of another family being subjected to the same fate at the hands of the British government.

“What is their future going to be? Their father was killed because he was deported form this country. He was sentenced to death,” she says.

“It’s not just about me and my kids. It’s about all the people they’re sending back. We’re suffering today, tomorrow it might be someone else. No one has got a right to take a child’s father from them.”