Six asylum seekers who brought a legal case against the Home Office for “unsafe” and “squalid” conditions at a former army barracks in Kent have won their High Court challenge. The group of men, all said to be “survivors of torture and/or human trafficking”, were formerly housed at Napier Barracks, in Folkestone, and argued that conditions at the camp posed “real and immediate risks to life and of ill-treatment”. The facility has been used to.
Asylum seekers risked all to get to the UK, then they were deported at dawn
Asylum seekers risk their lives to cross the Channel to reach Britain in small dinghies. Photograph: Sameer Al-Doumy/AFP/Getty Images
Asylum seekers risk their lives to cross the Channel to reach Britain in small dinghies. Photograph: Sameer Al-Doumy/AFP/Getty Images
Asylum seekers fled from war and repression. But many who crossed the Channel were put on early deportation flights, restrained, brutalised and denied legal safeguards
Sat 29 May 2021 09.17 EDT
Last modified on Sat 29 May 2021 10.18 EDT
At 7.15am, half an hour before charter flight Esparto 11 took off from Stansted airport, a detainee with a documented history of self-harm asked to use the plane’s bathroom. He was taken to the toilet by an escort working for the Home Office who held the door ajar with his foot and, after several minutes, peered inside to discover the detainee had slashed his wrist with a blade.
At 7.15am, half an hour before charter flight Esparto 11 took off from Stansted airport, a detainee with a documented history of self-harm asked to use the plane’s bathroom. He was taken to the toilet by an escort working for the Home Office who held the door ajar with his foot and, after several minutes, peered inside to discover the detainee had slashed his wrist with a blade. Pinning the man with his body weight to gain “control”, another.