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Man injured in bomb blast as a child waiting to hear whether Theresa May can deport him to Afghanistan

Turyalai Khaksar has lived in Britain for a decade

Jon Stone
Europe Correspondent
Wednesday 25 April 2018 20:51 BST
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Theresa May refused the man's asylum claim in 2015 and wants him sent back to Afghanistan
Theresa May refused the man's asylum claim in 2015 and wants him sent back to Afghanistan (Reuters)

A man who was seriously injured in a bomb blast in Afghanistan when he was 14 faces the risk of deportation to his former war-torn country, despite having lived in the UK for the past decade.

Turyalai Khaksar will learn on Thursday whether Theresa May can deport him to Afghanistan, where he has not lived since he was a teenager.

Mr Khaksar, who has suffered continuous pain and bleeding caused by malformations of his neck and back since the attack in Kunar province, was denied asylum in the UK by Theresa May in 2015 when she was Home Secretary.

Ms May refused the Afghan national’s claim on the basis that his debilitating condition was not at a stage where she believed it would be “inhumane” to send him back to the country of his birth, according to court documents.

The judgment, set to be issued by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, comes as the now prime minister faces massive criticism for trying to create a “hostile environment” for foreigners in Britain.

The policy, which has been variously branded both cruel and incompetent by critics, saw an unknown number of undocumented Windrush-era immigrants from the Caribbean facing deportation, denied medical treatment, work, and the ability to rent a home.

Afghanistan, which is still regularly wracked by violence, this week suffered its latest suicide bomb attacks on a voting registration centre in the capital Kabul, leaving more than 50 people dead and around 120 wounded. Gunmen also last week targeted two similar voter registration centres, abducting and killing people who worked for the country’s government.

Mr Khaksar, who was born in 1990 and has been living in Britain for around a decade, says sending him back to the country he has not been in since he was a teenager would amount to inhuman or degrading treatment, a breach of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, as well as Article 8 which guarantees his right to a family life.

The man appealed to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg after being rebuffed by the British courts, and after having a new submission rejected by the new Home Secretary Amber Rudd last year.

In 2016 shortly after refusing Mr Khaksar asylum Ms May said Britain should leave the European Convention on Human Rights, although the pledge was absent from her latest election manifesto published in 2017. The prime minister reportedly wanted to make ditching the bill of rights a centrepiece of a hypothetical 2020 general election after Brexit was completed.

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