Fury over deported refugee's lost family

Campaigners held a vigil outside Harmondsworth detention centre yesterday to protest against the deportation of an asylum seeker whose wife and daughter have been "lost" by the Home Office.

Despite pleas for clemency from at least a dozen MPs, the Home Office said it would press ahead with plans to send Aziz Ahmed back to Zanzibar last night, leaving behind his family who disappeared 14 months ago.

Immigration officers were expected to escort Mr Ahmed, a political refugee from Zanzibar, onto a British Airways flight from Heathrow last night. Refugee groups said that Mr Ahmed, whose case was first highlighted in last week's Independent on Sunday, faces renewed political persecution and arrest in Zanzibar where he was involved in protests against the existing political regime.

They also intend to complain to the Parliamentary Ombudsman about the Home Office's negligence and refusal of responsibility for the disappearance of Mr Ahmed's wife Husna and little girl Asya.

On 13 June last year, Mr Ahmed and his family went to Lunar House in Croydon, Surrey, to claim asylum after seeking refuge in a mosque. Immigration officials interviewed him while his wife and child waited in the corridor.

The mechanic was then taken to South Norwood police station without his family. It has now emerged that the Home Office originally claimed the Ahmed family never went to the offices on 13 June, but were forced to back down after being shown police records detailing the visit as well as fingerprints and photographs taken on that date by immigration officials.

The police have also been criticised for taking nearly four months after the disappearance to start a missing persons inquiry.

Dr Evan Harris, one of the MPs backing Mr Ahmed, condemned the Home Office's behaviour as "unacceptable and undemocratic".