Home Office wins Darfur asylum test case

14 November 2007 –The House of Lords has this morning ruled in favour of the Home Office in a landmark test case involving three Darfuri asylum seekers.

The Home Office had appealed to the House of Lords against a decision by the Court of Appeal, given on 4 April this year, that removal of Darfuris to Khartoum would be unduly harsh given the appalling conditions of life they would face in IDP camps surrounding the Sudanese capital.

However, the Court of Appeal had made no ruling on whether or not Darfuris might face torture, as it decided there was insufficient evidence at the time to make a ruling.

In February this year the Aegis Trust was able to help two Darfuris – Mohammed Degues Baraker and Sadiq Adam Osman – to escape from Sudan a second time following their removal by the Home Office from the UK as failed asylum seekers. Both men gave chilling accounts of torture at the hands of Sudan’s security services upon their arrival in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital.

Unfortunately, the evidence of their torture became available too late for the Court of Appeal’s consideration. Because of this, the House of Lords was unable to take it into account either. It was only able to look at whether or not the Court of Appeal made the right ruling given the evidence available to it at the time.

Stark alternatives

“A win for the Darfuris would have set a dramatic precedent for asylum seekers from other countries, since it would lower the bar from whether or not they would be at risk of persecution to whether or not they would have a satisfactory standard of living if sent back,” says Stephen Twigg, Campaigns Director at the Aegis Trust. “This win for the Home Office, on the other hand, could open the way for hundreds of survivors of ethnic cleansing from Darfur to be sent back to Khartoum despite serious risk of persecution – unless the Aegis Trust’s evidence of torture is taken into account.”

Following Aegis’ publication on 3 October of ‘Lives we Throw Away’, a report documenting the torture evidence, the Home Office indicated that it was considering a change of policy as a result. The hint was given in a letter sent the same day to Dr James Smith, Chief Executive of the Aegis Trust, by Liam Byrne MP, Minister of State for Borders and Immigration.

Home Office policy under review

“In light of the information your report contains, I have asked my officials urgently to review our policy guidance in relation to Sudan but it would not be appropriate to comment further until the House of Lords have ruled on this case,” Byrne stated.

“Now that the Home Office has secured the win it was looking for on the wider asylum issue with this case, it needs to address the specific dangers for Darfuris as a matter of urgency. We would urge it to declare an immediate moratorium on the removal to Khartoum not only of the three non-Arab Darfuris involved in this case, but also on the removal of any others, at least until the evidence of torture has been fully examined in the context of a new test case,” says Dr Smith. “Ideally though, a stay on removals should be the result of Government policy, not just court action. Maintaining that the removal of Darfuri asylum seekers to Khartoum is not unduly harsh has sent a dangerous message to Sudan’s genocidal regime that while Gordon Brown says the Government cares about Darfur, the reality falls short for Darfuris.”

“Darfuri survivors all over the country will be very frightened by this result,” says Abdul Jabar Adam, President of the Darfur Union, the umbrella community group for Darfuris in the UK. “They’ve seen their families killed and their villages destroyed by the current regime. They know that removal to Khartoum means torture or death – not just a hard life.

“We can see why the Home Office fought this case, but the whole issue of torture has been missed. In light of the dangers, the Home Office should come out and say that it won’t send any more survivors back.”

To help Darfuri survivors, a significant number of whom are destitute in the UK as a result of their asylum status, ‘Fund4Darfur’, a new Aegis Trust initiative, will be launched in London on 2 December by activist and film star Mia Farrow. It will help displaced Darfuris on the ground in the region and support campaigning work to bring the crisis to an end, as well as supporting Darfuri survivors in the UK.

ENDS