Home Office source says individual legal cases mean too few people may be able to board plane anyway
Two last-ditch legal challenges that attempted to halt the inaugural flight carrying asylum seekers to Rwanda have been rejected by judges.
The court of appeal upheld a previous decision to reject an injunction blocking the first flight, which was due to take off for the east African state on Tuesday.
Continue reading...Children’s and refugees charities raise concerns after detention of three children misjudged as adults in offshoring programme
Concerns are mounting that children wrongly assessed as adults by the Home Office could end up being offshored to Rwanda.
The Guardian understands that three age-disputed children who the Home Office declared to be adults and detained in preparation for offshoring to Rwanda have now been released. It is understood that concerns have been raised about whether at least three more detainees threatened with removal to the east African country are children rather than adults.
Continue reading...Covid, climate, stability and violence contributing to young people feeling pessimistic about future, survey of 15 countries suggests
African youth have lost confidence in their own countries and the continent as a whole to meet their aspirations and a rising number are considering moving abroad, according to a survey of young people from 15 countries.
The pandemic, climate crisis, political instability and violence have all contributed to making young people “jittery” about their futures since the Covid pandemic began, according to the African Youth Survey published on Monday.
Continue reading...Appeal against plan to remove asylum seekers who arrive in the UK via unofficial routes due to take place on Monday
Protests have taken place before a possible first flight removing asylum seekers to Rwanda, as unions said that officials should not be asked to take part in a policy that may subsequently be declared illegal.
With the first flight in the deportation scheme scheduled to take place on Tuesday evening, activists also promised to target the Spanish charter airline understood to be providing the aircraft.
Continue reading...Judge refuses to grant interim relief after lawyers for asylum seekers argued policy was unlawful
A high court judge has ruled that a controversial deportation flight to Rwanda that was due to take off early next week can go ahead.
Mr Justice Swift refused to grant interim relief – urgent action in response to an injunction application made by several asylum seekers facing offshoring to Rwanda.
Continue reading...Letters to asylum seekers assured them UNHCR was ‘closely involved’ in deportation scheme, high court hears
The United Nations refugee agency has made a dramatic intervention to try to halt Priti Patel’s plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda.
In a late submission of evidence, the UNHCR claimed the home secretary misled refugees over the organisation’s support for the plan. The agency has also said the scheme failed to meet the required standards of “legality and appropriateness” for transferring asylum seekers from one country to another.
Continue reading...About 30 asylum seekers expected to be sent to Rwanda on 14 June
Priti Patel’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda as soon as next week is facing a legal challenge under emergency proceedings launched in the high court on Wednesday.
An application for a judicial review claims that the home secretary’s policy is unlawful. Claimants are also seeking an injunction that will attempt to stop the plane from taking off.
Continue reading...High number of first 100 people to be sent to Rwanda are from Sudan, despite being small number of those crossing the Channel
The Home Office is offering to fly asylum seekers back to the conflict zones they escaped from if they do not wish to be sent to Rwanda, the Guardian has learned.
Documents issued to the first group of asylum seekers facing removal to the east African country state that the Home Office voluntary returns service can help them go back to their home country.
Continue reading...African state that signed deal with UK to host asylum seekers perpetrates ‘transnational repression’, Freedom House report says
Rwanda has been accused of being among the worst perpetrators of “transnational repression” in the US, stalking, harassing and threatening exiles there, according to a new report.
The report by the Freedom House advocacy group in Washington, names Rwanda alongside China, Russia, Iran and Egypt as the principal offenders in seeking to extend the reach of their repressive regimes into the US.
Continue reading...Group of asylum seekers sent formal notices advising they will be relocated to east African country, say officials
The first deportation flight to Rwanda carrying people who arrived in the UK without authorisation is scheduled to leave on 14 June, Priti Patel has announced.
A group of asylum seekers has been sent formal notices by the Home Office advising they will be relocated to the east African country, officials have said.
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Continue reading...Pre-action letter questions Home Office claims that east African country is ‘generally safe’
Priti Patel’s plan to send refugees on a one-way ticket to Rwanda is being legally challenged over the government’s alleged failure to identify risks facing vulnerable groups such as LGBTQ+ people.
A pre-action letter sent to the Home Office on behalf of the pressure group Freedom from Torture questions government claims that the east African state is “generally a safe country” for refugees.
The government’s claim that Rwanda is “generally” a “safe third country” is irrational.
It relies upon apparent pre-determination or bias.
The home secretary has breached her duty not to induce breaches of the European convention on human rights by her agents.
Removing asylum seekers to Rwanda is beyond Patel’s legal authority because it is contrary to the refugee convention.
Continue reading...Phénéas Munyarugarama is second person wanted for their involvement in 1994 mass killings to die
One of the last five fugitives wanted for his role in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, Phénéas Munyarugarama, died in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2002, UN prosecutors have announced.
Munyarugarama, a local army commander, “died of natural causes” and was buried in Kankwala, in the eastern DRC, the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (MICT) announced in The Hague.
Continue reading...Mohammed is among first asylum seekers to face removal under Home Office’s controversial scheme
It took Mohammed more than three years and a journey of more than 5,000 miles to reach the UK after fleeing a massacre in his village in Sudan.
Now, just over a week after arriving by kayak across the Channel, he is among the first tranche of asylum seekers facing forced removal to Rwanda, on the continent where his journey began.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Comments raise concerns UK will find it difficult to refuse requests from Kigali on sensitive issues
Paul Kagame, the president of Rwanda, has suggested the UK extradite suspects wanted in the east African country for alleged roles in the 1994 genocide, after a controversial deal with the Home Office to process asylum seekers there.
Speaking less than two weeks after the deal was announced, Kagame told an audience of diplomats in Kigali that included the British high commissioner he hoped “that when the UK is sending us these migrants, they should send us some people they have accommodated for over 15 years who committed crimes [in Rwanda]”.
Continue reading...DNA shows body exhumed in the country was Protais Mpiranya, Rwanda’s most wanted fugitive
Zimbabwe has denied harbouring the Rwandan genocide fugitive Protais Mpiranya after it emerged that he died in 2006 and was buried in the country after living there for four years.
The 20-year manhunt for one of the world’s most brutal killers came to a decisive end in an overgrown cemetery outside Harare, but Zimbabwean authorities say they did not conceal his whereabouts.
Continue reading...PM says he will ‘dig in for the fight’ with ‘leftie lawyers’ challenging government’s plan for refugees
Boris Johnson said 50 people have been told they will be sent to Rwanda within the next fortnight, and that he was ready to fight with “leftie lawyers” seeking to challenge the government’s plans for refugees.
Under the £120m scheme announced last month, people deemed to have entered the UK unlawfully will be transported to the east African country, where they will be allowed to apply for the right to settle.
Continue reading...Dutch prosecutors say 64-year-old man accused of role in massacres arrested after extradition request
A Rwandan man has been arrested in the Netherlands based on an extradition request from Rwanda on suspicion that he was involved in the central African country’s 1994 genocide, Dutch prosecutors have said.
The 65-year-old man, who was not identified, has been living in the Netherlands since he was granted asylum there in 1999. He was arrested on Wednesday in the town of Ermelo, 44 miles east of Amsterdam.
Continue reading...Exclusive: inside the manhunt for Protais Mpiranya, accused of Rwandan mass killings and the world’s most wanted war crimes fugitive
The 20-year manhunt for one of the world’s most brutal killers has come to a decisive end in an overgrown cemetery outside Harare.
The body of Protais Mpiranya, the former commander of the Rwandan presidential guard indicted for genocide, lay buried under a stone slab bearing a false name, which UN investigators tracked down and identified with the help of a critical lead found on a confiscated computer: the hand-drawn design for Mpiranya’s tombstone.
Continue reading...Rights organisations say refugees going into hiding as Home Office admits LGBTQ+ people could face persecution in African country
Ministers’ threats to send unauthorised migrants to Rwanda are having a detrimental impact on the physical and psychological health of people seeking asylum, according to two major refugee charities.
The British Red Cross and the Refugee Council, which worked with nearly 44,000 people in the asylum process, warn that they are disappearing from hotels and are reluctant to claim support for fear of deportation, detention and other harsh measures.
A Rwandan asylum seeker who contacted the Red Cross in south-east England fearing he could be sent back to the country. He disclosed that he would be in hiding and refraining from accessing support so he is not identified by the authorities.
An Afghan man living in temporary accommodation in the east Midlands who disclosed that he had gone into hiding, fearing that he would be detained and sent to Rwanda. He said that many of his friends were in the same situation and planned to go underground.
An asylum seeker from Ethiopia based in the West Midlands said that he feels anxious about the passing of the Nationality and Borders Act and disclosed he had left his accommodation out of fear that he will be sent to Rwanda.
An Afghan asylum seeker also based in the West Midlands who said he feels he is a second-class refugee as he is not eligible for recent schemes designed to support Ukrainians.
Continue reading...Home secretary attacks ‘specialist lawyers’ as Labour calls delayed plan little more than a press release
Priti Patel has admitted that it will take time to establish the government’s high-profile plan to send people who arrive in the UK without authorisation to Rwanda, amid growing suspicion that it will not solve the migration crisis in the Channel.
In a further attack on the legal profession, the home secretary blamed “specialist lawyers” as the main reason for the delays in setting up the scheme.
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