Four asylum seekers have Rwanda deportation flight appeals rejected

Home Office flight expected to take-off at 9.30pm on Tuesday

Four people have had their applications to be removed from the Home Office’s deportation flight to Rwanda rejected by the High Court.

The four asylum seekers brought legal challenges to their scheduled flight on Tuesday. Two legal bids to stop the plan failed in the Court of Appeal and the High Court yesterday but individuals could still appeal the decision to put them on the flight.

The individuals included one Iranian father, whose son is the UK, a Vietnamese national, an Iranian Kurd whose sister is living in the UK, and another Iranian national.

In the first application, an Iranian Kurd - who had suffered PTSD in Turkey while travelling to the UK - asked not to be put on the upcoming flight due to his mental health and his relationship with his sister in the UK.

However, in a short ruling on Tuesday morning, Mr Justice Swift refused to grant interim relief.

He said: “The Secretary of State was entitled to reach the decisions she did.”

The Vietnamese individual also had his application to stop his deportation refused.

His lawyers argued that he was told about the decision to deport him to Rwanda in a letter which he could not read. The claimant can only speak Vietnamese and did not understand English. His lawyers said that there was not a translator present when he was given the letter.

Goverment lawyers presented witness testimony that said that the individual was given an interpreter to aid him. The judge sided with the government’s evidence and said that the Vietnamese individual had been fairly notified of his deportation.

Another asylum seeker applying to be removed from the flight was a Christian convert from Iran.

The Iranian and his son are both in the UK but only the father has been scheduled to go to Rwanda.

He said that he had during his travels to the UK he was threatened with a knife, constantly abused and witnessed people stabbing each other. He detailed being abused in Greece and said that he received no help from the Greek authorities when he appealed for help.

“They made our lives hell, we tried to report it but nobody helped us,” he said.

In mental health assessments read out to court, the man was described as “middle-aged man, tearful intermittently and severely anxious.”

He was described as “suffering from depression disorder which is of a moderate degree and post traumatic stress disorder.”

His son said in a statement that he speaks to his father “in any period that he gets” and “this is the longest period I have been away from him.”

His father is currently being held in Colnbrook detention centre.

In the final application for removal, the High Court heard that the claimant, an Iranian man who spoke Sorani Kurdish, should not be deported to Rwanda because there would be no one there who spoke his language.

A mental health assessment of the man, read out to court, found that he experiences “voices, apparently psychotic symptoms, voices calling his name.”

A psychiatrist found that the man had “profound symptoms indicating of anxiety and depressive disorder” and was “at increased risk of self half due to his isolation and potential impulsivity.”

Home Office laywers testified however that he could get access to health services in Rwanda and that he would be provided with a phone and access to the internet.

This, they said, would allow him to access the translation services Big Word if he needed help communicating.

Justice Swift rejected the man’s application to be removed from the flight, saying: “I accept that the fact of removal to Rwanda will be distressing for this claimant, it will be a further step in a long journey that this claimant has already undertaken.”

Foreign secretary Liz Truss vowed on Tuesday morning that anyone pulled from the flight would be “on the next flight”.

She defended the government’s decision, saying: “Our policy is completely legal, it’s completely moral.”