Bar By Judges On Removing Darfuris Gives Hope To 1,000

Up to 1,000 asylum seekers who fled from violence in Darfur were given new hope yesterday when three appeal court judges halted the removal of three Darfuris whom the home secretary, John Reid, planned to relocate to refugee or squatter camps near Khartoum.

The judges ruled that the oppressive conditions in the camps near the Sudanese capital, plus the lack of resources for economic survival and the total alteration in a refugee’s life, were powerful factors indicating that the resettlement would be “unduly harsh”.

The court allowed appeals by three Darfuris against rulings of the asylum and immigration tribunal, quashed Mr Reid’s refusal of asylum, and refused him permission to appeal to the House of Lords;he can still ask the lords to hear an appeal.

The judgment is expected to bring relief to up to 1,000 people who have sought shelter in Britain from human rights violations in their homeland of Darfur in western Sudan, where Arab Janjaweed militiamen have been accused by UN officials of “ethnic cleansing”.

“This is very, very good news,” said Nouraldean Mohammed, 37, one of the three black African subsistence farmers, who fled Darfur in 2004 after his village was attacked by the Janjaweed. “I am very glad. For three years, I have been without a job, without decent clothes. It has really been very hard. I lost weight and my beard turned white. You spend all the time thinking. But this decision gives me hope to live. I know I have survived now.”

The men appealed on two grounds: that they were at risk of torture at the hands of the Sudanese government, and that the regime they would be subjected to on return was unduly harsh. The judges rejected their argument on the first ground because of lack of evidence, but accepted the second.

Lord Justice Buxton, sitting with Lords Justices Moore-Bick and Moses, said the three men – the other two were identified only as AH and IG – were victims or potential victims of persecution by Janjaweed militiamen.

It was “persecution which the government of Sudan has connived in or, at the very least, not restrained”. There was no shortage of material suggesting a real risk of ill-treatment to non-Arab Darfuris who were returned as failed asylum seekers. But there was very little substantiated evidence of such ill-treatment, he added.

On the other hand, descriptions of the appalling living and health conditions in the camps made “frightening reading”, he said. Many camps in Khartoum had been demolished, making 250,000 people homeless or facing life at sites in the desert with no water or other services.

James Smith, chief executive of the Aegis Trust, which last week publicised a case where a returned asylum seeker was tortured in Khartoum, said: “In light of this judgment, and in light of fresh evidence of the torture of Darfuris removed to Khartoum, brought to light by the Aegis Trust last week, we call for a Home Office moratorium on the further removal of any Darfuri African asylum seekers to Khartoum.”

Late on Tuesday the deportation of another Darfuri asylum seeker, Mohammed Abdulhadi Ali, was halted after his lawyers made a last-minute appeal in anticipation of yesterday’s case.