Fleeing Afghans to take mental tests
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Your support makes all the difference.Two Afghan parents who are facing deportation are to have psychiatric tests in an attempt to persuade ministers not to remove them from Britain, their lawyer said yesterday.
Feriba and Farid Ahmadi were arrested on 25 July in a raid by riot police on a mosque in Lye, near Stourbridge, West Midlands, where they had taken refuge.
Their children, aged six and four, were ordered on Saturday to be held in Harmondsworth detention centre in west London. They had been living with friends, but a judge ruled on Saturday that they must be detained. The family are to be returned to Germany where they first claimed asylum.
Mrs Ahmadi, 24, is said to have had two nervous breakdowns since fleeing Afghanistan. Pierre Makhlouf, the family's lawyer, said the Ahmadis would see a specialist from the Traumatic Stress Clinic in London, on Tuesday.
The Ahmadis are currently scheduled to be deported on Wednesday to Germany, where they first claimed asylum. The family claimed they had been racially harassed in Germany and do not want to return.
Mr Makhlouf, from the Hackney Law Centre, said: "The main aim is to ensure that the Secretary of State considers the impact upon the family if they are removed in terms of their psychological well-being.
"I'm arguing that the parents need psychiatric follow-up care and that should be enabled with a support network of relatives and friends for it to be effective," he said."The aim is to show the extent of the harm that will be caused by their removal from the UK."
The Ahmadis' supporters said the children should stay with the family friend rather than be held in "a glorified prison" where they were left "traumatised". But the Home Office minister Beverley Hughes said that "in almost all circumstances the best interests of children are served in being with their parents".
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