‘Let me go die, rather than killing me slowly’: Asylum seeker detained for half a decade released to homelessness

Exclusive: After fleeing torture in Zimbabwe, 36-year-old Craig Pedzai ended up trapped in asylum detention – supposed to last no longer than a month – for four-and-a-half years. Now he’s homeless and the dream of being able to provide for his young daughter is further away than ever

Craig Pedzai’s hand trembles as he brings a cup of black coffee to his cracked lips. He turns down the offer of lunch. “I can’t eat at the moment,” he says in clear English, shaking after three days without a meal. “Too much stress.”

The Zimbabwean national looks exhausted, yet highly alert, as he sits on a bench in Birmingham city centre to tell the story of his 18 years in the UK. He spent last night on the streets after he was released him from immigration detention to homelessness, but this is a minor blow compared to what he has already been through. After repeatedly rejected asylum claims wound up in him being detained in a removal centre for nearly five years, he has come to expect such treatment.

“I sometimes think to myself, why don’t I just call it a day?” says Craig, looking at the ground. “I’m tired, my body is exhausted. I don’t see myself going any further. All I wanted was to find a job and start working, for my daughter. But I’m walking the streets with nowhere to sleep.”

You wouldn’t know the 36-year-old is homeless. His hair is freshly trimmed and the small patches of dirt on his grey tracksuit only visible on close inspection. He explains that he got a free haircut by agreeing to sweep the floor of a barber, and he turns his tracksuit inside out when he beds down for the night. “I want to blend in,” he says. “I don’t want everyone to know I slept in a bush last night. I don’t want them to know about my problems.”

But his quivering hands and sunken eyes are tell-tale signs of his plight, and the scars on his wrists reveal the mental torture he has endured.

Craig’s problems began in 2001, when he fled to the UK, aged 17, after being targeted in the southern African country for supporting the political opposition MDC party. His parents – his only close relatives – had already been arrested for their activism. After attending a rally, he too was apprehended by police.

“They took us into the bush and kept us there. They beat us up, did some not so nice things. I’ve still got the scars today,“ he says, visibly pained by the memory of being tortured mentally, physically, and even sexually, by officers. “They burnt our house down, everything. All the memories, pictures.“

He escaped after a week of beatings, but now wanted by the authorities, he had to flee the country. With the help of a distant uncle, he left Zimbabwe unnoticed by boarding a flight to the UK, arriving on 5 August 2001.

“I got to the airport. They stamped my passport and said ‘six month’s visa’ or something like that. I got out and the person my uncle said would meet me was not there,” he recalls. “I waited there for a few hours, nobody was coming. It was cold. I’d never been abroad in my life.

“I didn’t know anything about immigration or things like that. I thought I’d just be here for a bit. My mind was all over the place. I never planned to come here, or to come and give evidence to prove what I’ve been through. I was running away.”

Unaware that he could claim asylum, Craig applied for a student visa, which was refused. He then applied for asylum in July 2003, but this was rejected on the basis that there was a lack of evidence, which his current lawyer attributes to poor legal representation.

He subsequently became homeless in Leeds. He moved into the home of an alcoholic man who offered him a room for free, in return for him cleaning the house and driving him around.

“He said he was going to help me, only to keep me in his house,” says Craig. “When he left he locked me in. I couldn’t eat when he wasn’t there. ‘Don’t look out of the front windows,’ he would say. He wanted the house spotless.”

During this time, Craig was convicted of driving uninsured, and under the influence of alcohol several times, and was subsequently sentenced to prison for six months, of which he served three.

He was then released to homelessness and convicted of a string of minor offences in the years after his release. He says he was forced to shoplift in order to eat, and that at one point out of desperation to get off the streets, he smashed a window in order to go back to prison.

At the age of 21, Craig formed a relationship with a 19-year-old woman in Huddersfield and moved in with her and her parents. Things began to look up. He and his girlfriend had a child and he re-applied for asylum with the help of her father, at which point he decided to move into asylum accommodation.

“My daughter was growing up, I had to provide something. I wasn’t allowed to work so I was just sitting at home,” he says. “She told me to come back, but I felt like I had to get myself sorted first, I had to provide.”

Craig with his daughter, now 12, who lives in Huddersfield while he is in Birmingham (Craig Pedzai)

Craig’s asylum claim was again refused and his support was stopped. Not wanting to tell his girlfriend and her family, he started sleeping on the streets again, at which point he got caught up in a fight and was sentenced to prison for four months on a common assault charge.

In 2011, the day he was due to be released from prison, Craig was informed that he was being arrested under immigration law. He was first taken to HMP Liverpool and then Morton Hall immigration removal centre, where he was cumulatively held for four and a half years.

“They said they were going to deport me when they knew all along there were no deportations to Zimbabwe,“ he says. ”If you’re deporting me, deport me. Let me go die, rather than keeping me in prison for something I didn’t do. Killing me slowly for years and years.”

Remembering the physiological impact of being in detention for such a long period of time, he says: “You will never come out of that place okay. If you’re sick, paracetamol. If you break your leg, paracetamol. I saw people kill themselves in there. They are making money on people’s lives.”

Craig went through periods of suicidal ideation while in detention, planning how he would kill himself in his cell during the night: “I was thinking to myself there’s a bar in the bedroom. I was holding onto it and I could tell that it could hold me. The officers don’t check from 9pm until 8am. I knew how to do it.”

In 2015, the Zimbabwean national was released on mental health grounds. But he was re-detained in January 2019, at which point he began the process of making further submissions on his asylum claim. Last month, on 24 May, these were refused.

The Home Office accepted the medical report accounting evidence of torture, but claimed that because he had not contacted the offices of the political party he had supported in Zimbabwe, he “has not and will not experience difficulties because of his political or imputed political opinion.” It also stated that he was a “persistent offender” and that “the best interests of the child must be balanced against other relevant factors, including the public interest in deporting foreign criminals”.

Craig was released last month after he submitted a fresh claim – to street homelessness. Following intervention from his lawyer, the Home Office placed him in a Birmingham hostel, where he says he has to share a single bed with a stranger. The plastic bag containing his possessions was recently stolen by somebody in the property. Now he prefers to sleep outside.

The 36-year-old is now required to report to the Home Office once a week in Loughborough, despite this being 40 miles away from Birmingham.

His lawyer, Nick Hughes, from Duncan Lewis, says that throughout the entirety of the case the Home Office’s treatment of Craig had been “nothing short of abhorrent”.

“He suffers from PTSD, severe depression, a history of self-harm and suicidal ideation. He’s a very unwell man,” says Nick. “Despite him being an incredibly mentally unwell individual, who has evidence that he was tortured while in Zimbabwe, they are intent on trying put him on a flight, detaining him for four and half years previously, and now attempting to just leave him on the streets and let him be.

“For a person who has been through so much already in the UK, this just feels like yet another blow. He’s almost come to expect this treatment. He is completely distraught by being homeless, but he thinks he has to get on with it because of how he’s been treated throughout.

“He’s been treated appallingly since he’s been here, and this is just another sad step on his journey unfortunately.”

Celia Clarke, director of Bail for Immigration Detainees (BID), a charity that supports immigration detainees, says that in Craig’s case, “cruelty upon cruelty” has been “heaped upon a vulnerable individual who should be protected and cared for – instead of which he is subjected to situations which would test the sanest of people”.

“Four and a half years detention alone would send anyone out of their mind,” she says. “Separation from their child for that period would also be intolerable. And then the decision to release him into homelessness shows a complete and callous disregard for his welfare, or well-being, or of the impact that would, on top of everything else, have on him.”

Craig walks with a heavy limp, and recounts that he hurt his foot the night before while running away from a group of boys. Living on the street makes him a target for people looking for trouble, placing him at risk of being harmed or of committing minor crimes again.

“I’m just a ghost walking around in town. Sleeping on the street, young boys trying to mug me,” he says. “It’s like the Home Office wants me get into a problem, and then they have a reason to put me back in the detention centre.

“All the dreams I had of working hard for my daughter to give her a good life. It hurts to see people going to work every day. I’m already 36, but I’m walking the streets with nowhere to sleep. Many times I’ve tried to commit suicide. I’m tired, I’m just tired. I don’t want to hurt my daughter, but I can’t live like this anymore.”

A Home Office spokesperson said: “As legal proceedings are ongoing in this case, it would be inappropriate to comment.”