Eritrean asylum seekers force plane to land in Sudan
(Adds Libyan foreign minister comment)
By Beatrice Mategwa
KHARTOUM, Aug 27 (Reuters) – A group of 76 Eritreans on a repatriation flight from Libya on Friday forced their plane to change course and land in the Sudanese capital Khartoum where they sought political asylum, U.N. and Sudanese officials said.
The Libyan military transport plane had taken off from the town of Khufrah and was heading for the Eritrean capital Asmara when some of the angry deportees moved into the cockpit, said a Sudanese official who asked not to be named.
Libya had denied them refugee status and they wanted to seek asylum in Sudan rather than return home, an official said.
“They are afraid to go home to Eritrea, that’s why they said they did it,” Sudanese Interior Minister Major General Abdel Rahim Mohamed Hussein told Reuters.
Eritrean government regulations forbid young people from leaving the country. Human rights groups say hundreds of Eritrean refugees and asylum seekers have been forcibly sent home, where many have faced torture and detention without charge or trial. Eritrea denies the allegations.
The Eritrean charge d’affaires in Khartoum, quoted by the Egyptian state news agency MENA, said the deportees had no weapons but made such a disturbance on the plane that the pilot decided it was safest to land in Khartoum.
One pilot told Dubai-based Al Arabiya television however the group had been armed. “Some time after take-off they attacked us in the cockpit with knives and metal objects. They hijacked the plane and we were forced to land in Khartoum’s airport,” the channel showed him saying. It did not give his name.
“They asked us to take off so we did then they asked us to fly to Ethiopia. We managed to land in Khartoum again with the help of authorities at Khartoum’s airport,” he said.
“The police were able to control the situation.”
CREW SLIGHTLY INJURED
The Sudanese Foreign Ministry said in a statement that one of the eight crew of the plane was slightly injured during the fracas and received treatment after landing.
The plane made an initial landing in Khartoum in late morning and the passengers demanded to speak to a U.N. official. It took off again 40 minutes later when the passengers saw heavy security and flew around for 40 minutes before making a sceond landing, it said.
Michael Lindenbauer, deputy representative in Sudan of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, told Reuters the deportees would spend the night at Khartoum airport.
The Sudanese authorities had made no decision to arrest any of them or force them to go to Eritrea, he added.
“They have been provided with some assistance in food and drink and they will remain at the airport for the night.
“Tomorrow we will continue our discussions with the authorities and with the passengers. So no decisions have been taken,” Lindenbauer said.
Another UNHCR official said the Sudanese authorities were treating the incident as a humanitarian problem.
The deportees had slipped into Libya through Sudan in the hope of immigrating illegally into Europe, the charge said. The North African coast, including Libya, is the starting point for boats smuggling people across the Mediterranean.
“They are not refugees but trespassers who had entered Libya. We won’t become a stop over to Europe and we don’t want them to commit crimes in Libya,” Libyan Foreign Liaison and International Cooperation Mohammed Abdel-Rahman Shalgam told Al Jazeera television.
“We are in constant touch with their governments and we are extraditing them in a very respectful way,” he said.
TORTURE, SECRET DETENTION
UNHCR recommends that even failed asylum seekers are not forcibly returned to Eritrea.
In its latest report on country in the Horn of Africa, Amnesty International said 230 Eritreans sent home by Malta in 2002 had been detained on arrival.
It said women, children and the elderly were reportedly released but others had been tortured and held without charge in secret military detention centres.
Human Rights Watch this month sent a letter to Eritrean President Isayas Afewerki saying it was concerned about more than 100 Eritreans forcibly repatriated from Libya in July.
“Human Rights Watch has received reliable reports that many of those refugees are still confined and that some have been tortured. To our knowledge, none were ever brought before a court and your government has not revealed their whereabouts.”
(additional reporting by Richard Waddington in Geneva, Nima Elbagir in Geneina, Katie Nguyen in Nairobi and Jonah Fisher in Asmara) (Writing and additional reporting by Jonathan Wright in Cairo; editing by Mary Gabriel)