'Why are we here? There are no toys. It's horrible'

Detained Afghans give first interview as a family

Raekha Prasad
Guardian

Monday August 12, 2002


The path to the Ahmadi family is littered with obstacles. Names, photographs, addresses and belongings are taken from visitors to Harmondsworth detention centre. Fingerprints are demanded at three security points. The body frisk is thorough before visitors are escorted to security doors that delay entry to a room with the size and soul of an airport lounge.

For the Home Office, the Ahmadis are best neither seen nor heard. It has made up its mind to deport them on Wednesday. The barbed wire and CCTV cameras are the end of the line for a young Afghan family forced from a West Midlands mosque by police in riot gear using battering rams, and whose case has divided the community in which they lived.

On Friday night the Ahmadis' efforts to keep their children out of this place were shattered when their six-year-old daughter and four-year-old son were held during a visit. The children had been made wards of court so they could live freely while their parents appealed against their deportation. But Home Office lawyers were waiting for them and, aided by immigration staff, managed to separate them from their guardian. The ensuing night-long legal battle to get the children out ended with a high court judge deciding that the home secretary's powers overrode those of the family court.

Her legs crossed and dangling from the chair that swamps her, the girl, speaking to a journalist for the first time, asks: "Why are we here?" She has a ripe Midlands accent. "I have an idea. I think it's because we're half German." She is tired, she says. "There aren't any toys in here. It's horrible. There's no one to play with. I want to be with auntie."

The beds don't have "proper sheets" and her little brother has to sleep in a cot "like really tiny babies". The girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, brightens as she talks about a park she visited with huge slides a few days ago, her favourite T-shirts and whether there is a spot on her chin. Her brother curls in a ball next to her and listens, quiet and sullen.

Their parents are battered and broken."Feriba's not had peace for so long," says Farid, 33. He is much thinner and more lifeless than the images in the newspapers and on television. He glances anxiously at his 24-year-old wife, who sobs into her hands. If he is not strong he will lose his family, he says. "She just needs to be able to recover. Who's going to give her back to me?"

Farid is the son of an army brigadier prominent in the Soviet-supported regime overturned by the Taliban, and owned a car garage in Kabul. He claims he was persecuted and tortured. The couple lived with his family and their home was bombed, killing his two brothers and his sister-in-law and maiming his mother.

He has money and "wants nothing" financially from the British government, he says. Germany, where the family spent seven months in asylum camps, brought more grief, they claim, in the form of racism and religious bigotry.

Since leaving Afghanistan in 2000, Feriba has had two breakdowns and been prescribed antidepressants. In Germany she was admitted to hospital twice. "There were no friends and family to support us," Farid says. "Here we have family and friends. The kids were going to school, learning how to speak English."

Before the Taliban took power, Feriba was planning to study medicine. She was a good student, ambitious and confident. In Britain she planned to train as a nurse. Now she picks her children up in turn, stroking their heads, squeezing and kissing them. "When they feel happy they're playing with each other," she says. "They talk and read to each other."

In Germany, the daughter was quiet and small for her age. In Lye, a small town near Stourbridge, she started to grow. She had friends. She loved her school.

Soraya Walton, the friend who was caring for the children before they were detained, took the place of an adored aunt in Kabul.

The day the couple were taken to Harmondsworth, Feriba was told to ring Soraya and tell her to bring the children there. With an immigration officer standing over her, she dialled the number and left a message on her answering machine. "The way they told me it was obvious I didn't have a choice. They said, 'Don't you want to go to Germany with your children?' "

When Feriba realised the children had been detained she had a panic attack. "Did they want my children to see me in that state? Do they want me to suffer?" Says Farid: "They told us, 'These are your children. Take them to your room.' They cried all night. They have no appetite. They're clever, they know this is a prison."

Lawyers are working against the clock to appeal the judgment to detain the children and hope that medical and psychological evidence, which has yet to be considered, will show that holding them is not in their best interests. The decision to deport the family is also being examined by lawyers.

All she wants, Feriba says, is to put all the bombs and bad memories behind her. The morning the police rammed down the door of Ghausia Jamia mosque, she leapt from her bed thinking that she was being bombed all over again. "I heard a huge noise. Though I jumped up, I wasn't thinking straight. I put my clothes on, but I didn't know what I was doing. I heard noises coming closer to the door and then a knock. If the children were there they would have been really, really terrified."

Farid continues: "Anyone who saw us being grabbed and escorted out, would have thought, 'How many people have they murdered to justify this many men surrounding them?'"

In the confusion, Feriba remembered only her handbag. In the police car she realised her anti-depressants were still inside and told one of the police officers, who reassured her they would follow. They have never arrived.

She has seen hospital staff in Harmondsworth and asked for her medication. "The nurse gave me painkillers for my headache. I told them I've got depression not a headache. I am so nervous. Everyday my mind changes because everyday my life changes."

The Home Office said last night: "Families with children are detained only where this is absolutely necessary, for as short a period as possible, and they are held in dedicated, well-resourced family units. We believe that in almost all circumstances the best interests of children are served in being with their parents.

"The Ahmadi family made their application for asylum in Germany and Germany has agreed to accept them back and consider their case."