16 September 2008

Media Release:

IFIR has been informed by Kurdish asylum seekers yesterday that at 7am,
Monday 15 September Home Office commandoes went to the following four
detention centres Tinsley House, Dover House, Oakington and Colnbrook
removed and handcuffed 60 Iraqi asylum seekers and placed them in five
coaches. Their mobile phones were confiscated before they could call
solicitors or friends.

The asylum seekers were then transported to Stansted airport, where a
German aircraft waited to return them to Erbil in Northern Iraq. However,
when one of the asylum seekers punched and smashed a window of the plane,
the Commandoes boarded the plane to try to unsuccessfully pin the Iraqi
asylum seekers down. Many of the asylum seekers were badly beaten including
Fazzel the leader of the Campsfield hunger strikers whose face is badly
bruised.. The flight was cancelled and the wounded Iraqi asylum seekers have
been taken back to Colnbrook and put in single cells.

IFIR and the Coalition to stop Deportations to Iraq demand an immediate
release of all Iraqi asylum seekers, an immediate stop to the policy of
forcible deportation, a boycott of Royal Jordanian Airline and all other
companies complicit in forcible removals. The government must end this
barbarous policy once and for all. The Home Office is willing to play
politics with these Iraqi lives, proving only to itself that Iraq is safe by
sending people back to a situation everyone else can see to be volatile

The operation this morning has entirely bypassed any usual procedure and
represents a new level of contempt for Iraqi asylum seekers we ask all human
right and refugee right organisations, MP’s and Trade unions to support
our campaign to stop this policy of forcible deportation.



CSDIRAQ

Dashty Jamal
International Federation of Iraqi Refugees
 d.jamal@ntlworld.com
Tel:07856032991