Most Detainees Taken Off Deportation Flight List to Jamaica After Activists Block Road

Most of the people due to board a controversial deportation flight to Jamaica on Wednesday have been removed from the flight list, as anti-deportation activists have blocked the road in front of a detention centre to try to prevent them from being put on the plane.

The activists, calling themselves Stop The Plane, have locked themselves to metal pipes outside Brook House immigration removal centre near Gatwick airport.

Originally more than 50 Jamaican nationals were due to fly, but the Guardian understands most are no longer on the passenger list.

The flight was due to depart at 1am on Wednesday morning with only two or three passengers onboard. Messages online from anti-deportation groups said the flight departed Birmingham airport with just three deportees on board a plane able to seat 350 people.

Read more: Diane Taylor, Guardian, https://rb.gy/ar2ykj

Stop the Mass Deportation to Jamaica – Wednesday 10th November

The Home Office plans to deport at least 50 people to Jamaica in the early hours of Wednesday the 10th of November. Reports indicate that some have lived in the UK since they were three months old, while others have no family or support in Jamaica. At least 24 British children risk being separated from a parent by this latest deportation flight.

A survey carried out by Movement for Justice of 17 Jamaicans detained in preparation for the flight found that 10 of them have lived in the UK since childhood. One man came to the UK 31 years ago at the age of nine and was raised by his Windrush-generation aunt after his mother’s death in Jamaica. At least 24 British children are facing separation from their fathers as a result of the deportations. Before another Jamaica charter in December 2020, a deal was quietly agreed between the Home Office and the Jamaica high commission not to put people on the plane who had come to the UK at the age of 12 or under, but a similar agreement does not appear to be in place this time.

Jamaica’s top diplomat in the UK has said he is “deeply concerned” about Home Office plans to send people who came to the country as children back to the Caribbean island on a deportation flight next week. Deportation flights to Jamaica raise particular concerns because of the Windrush scandal. Although the Home Office says nobody from the Windrush generation will be on next week’s flight, some due to fly have Windrush family connections and many have lived a substantial part of their childhoods in the UK, including one person who arrived when he was three months old. Seth Ramocan, Jamaica’s high commissioner in London, said: “From a human rights perspective I am deeply concerned about cases in which persons are being removed having lived in the UK since childhood and have no known relations in Jamaica or familiarity with Jamaica. There are clear examples of these cases and I implore the Home Office to give due consideration to this concern.”

What can you do to stop this outrage

Contact your MP/Councillor, ask them to urgently speak to the Home Secretary and request the deportation is stopped.

You can contact you MP/Councillor for free via
https://www.writetothem.com/

Extradition to Moldova Halted: Appalling Prison Conditions Result In Blanket Discharge

The CPS has conceded it can no longer rebut challenges to extradition to Moldova, on account of the appalling prison conditions in that country, which features rampant, inter-prisoner violence and abuse. The Committee for the Prevention of Torture has long highlighted the issue across fifteen reports from visits spanning over 20 years. Peter Caldwell and Malcolm Hawkes, in separate cases argued that no assurance would be capable of providing a guarantee that their clients would not be subjected to a serious risk of assault by other inmates in a crude caste system, rife with exploitation. The prisons themselves are so short staffed as to rely upon the prisoners to self-regulate, regardless of the risks to the inmates’ mental and physical well-being. In repeated judgments at the Westminster Magistrates Court, Moldovan requests were being refused on this Article 3 issue. This has now culminated in the concession that no extradition to that country may take place. The position recalls the CPS concession in 2015, also on an Article 3 prison conditions issue, in respect of Hungary which led to the issuing of improved assurances and resumed extradition. The expectation is the Moldovan government will try to provide an enforceable guarantee in the future. However, for now, no extradition to Moldova is possible and all current cases have been discharged.

Source: Doughty Street Chambers, https://rb.gy/ceq

Indian Extradition Request For Murder Refused

On 22 September 2021, District Judge Snow discharged Gursharan Singh, Amrit Singh and Piara Singh Gill from an extradition request issued by India. India alleged that the three British nationals were involved in a conspiracy to murder Rulda Singh, a politician, who was shot outside his home on 29 July 2009 and died two weeks later. District Judge Snow, referring to the “long running saga” suffered by the requested persons, accepted the submission that there was no evidence sufficient to make out a case to answer against any of them, and accordingly discharged them from the extradition request. Edward Fitzgerald QC represented Amrit Singh, instructed by SKR Legal Solicitors. Graeme Hall represented Gursharan Singh, instructed by Gareth Peirce of Birnberg Peirce Solicitors. The decision has been reported widely, including by the BBC and the Times of India.

Source: Doughty Street Chambers, https://rb.gy/7mdgje

Immigration Officers Contributed to Asylum Seekers Death

An inquest jury has found that Home Office immigration enforcement officers contributed to the death of an asylum seeker when they raided a carwash on 2018. 23-year-old Mustafa Dawood fell through the roof of carwash in Newport, South Wales in June 2018 as he was fleeing immigration officers. The fall resulted in fatal head injuries. Immigration enforcement raided the carwash after receiving information about foreign nationals without the right to work working there. The officer in charge of the operation said that he had called for the pursuit to be abandoned when Dawood started to climb shelving to get away, however the other officers said that they did not recall this order being made and they pursued the chase. The jury at the inquest found that the officers had stayed “relatively close” to Mustafa and that this proximity could have contributed to his death. They also found that officers were not “appropriately trained in pursuit procedures”.

Read more: IAS, https://rb.gy/nb7ta1

Government no Longer Keeping Proper Track Of 70,000 Immigration Offenders

The Home Office has given up on keeping proper track of 70,000 immigration offenders, while it also failed to ensure sufficient data was collected from those required to report in-person to the authorities, including potentially dangerous foreign criminals. That is one of the takeaways from a damning report by the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration (ICIBI) after it examined procedures at Becket House Immigration Reporting Centre in central London. The ICIBI added that 'the majority of individuals currently required to report are those whom the Home Office considers present the greatest potential risk of causing harm to UK society, often foreign national offenders with previous convictions in the UK'. Inspectors said that the government had stopped requiring the vast bulk of 82,000 immigration offenders to report in-person to the Home Office or Police Stations following the onset of the pandemic in March 2020. As a result, the total reporting populationhas fallen dramatically from 82,000 (pre-pandemic) to 11,500 in August 2021 when inspectors visited Becket House in Southwark, London.

Read more: Migratin Watch, https://rb.gy/mi4hnl

Unanimous Acquittal Of Vulnerable asylum seeker on Class A drug trafficking charges

MM, an asylum seeker and previous victim of trafficking, was acquitted by a jury on the second week of his trial at Woolwich Crown Court. MM faced charges of supplying Class A drugs, dating back to February 2019 when he experienced a period of homelessness Submissions in Court led to the disclosure of vital police intelligence, withheld until the trial, which corroborated MM’s account given at police interview. During the course of the trial, MM’s Solicitor exposed endemic investigative and disclosure failures before the jury. The jury returned unanimous verdicts of Not Guilty on all counts in under 50 minutes.

Source: Doughty Street Chambers,https://rb.gy/p3mvry

Extradition To Russia Discharged as an Abuse of the Process of Tthe Court

Westminster Magistrates’ Court has discharged long running extradition proceedings brought by the Russian Federation against the successful Russian businessman, Georgy Bedzhamov. Mr Bedzhamov faced abusive and politically motivated criminal allegations presented as offences of fraud, in Russia. However, the Home Secretary has accepted that Mr Bedzhamov’s removal to Russia would violate his rights under the European Convention on Human Rights. On this basis, he contended that the extradition proceedings were abusive and should be dismissed having regard in particular to section 93(6A) of the Extradition Act 2003. At a hearing on 20 September 2021, District Judge Snow agreed that it would be an abuse of process of the Court to permit Russia’s extradition request to continue, and the proceedings were stayed and Mr Bedzhamov discharged, with costs.

Source: Doughty Street Chambers, https://rb.gy/gpyoal

Suicide Risk Bars Extradition to Romania

An ethnic Hungarian woman’s extradition to Romania, to serve a 7-year sentence for people trafficking offences has been barred on the grounds of oppression due to her high risk of suicide. The High Court reversed the decision of the district judge and found that his treatment of the evidence and the facts of the case had been unfair. Represented by Malcolm Hawkes, the Appellant relied upon an expert psychologist’s opinion which showed that her suicide risk was currently high and would be higher still if extradited to Romania. The court found the district judge was wrong to reject the psychologist’s conclusions when the prosecution had failed to challenge that evidence at all. The court also agreed that the district judge was wrong to have ignored or downplayed the detailed and cogent evidence of anti-Hungarian discrimination in Romania. He failed to take into account the Appellant’s evidence of serious anti-Hungarian discrimination generally and police torture by beating. This evidence was consistent with the European Commission on Racial Intolerance’s 2019 report.

The judge also failed to reflect the Committee for the Prevention of Torture report of their 2018 visit to Romania which found that none of the prisons they visited had any suicide prevention plan in place, while the Romanian law penalises those prisoners who engage in acts of self-harm. Notwithstanding the seriousness of the Appellant’s offences, Mr. Justice Holman concluded that the combination of the time spent in custody during these proceedings (2 years) the Appellant’s serious suicide risk, ethnic discrimination and mental anguish she would suffer in prison rendered her extradition to Romania oppressive.

Source: Doughty Street Chambers, https://rb.gy/gkng3y