Terence Blacker: A tortured poet and a shameful government

Those who read Ntadi's work see a writer in trouble. The Home Office sees a bogus asylum seeker

When the Congolese playwright Jean-Louis Ntadi looks down on London next week from the London Eye, he could be forgiven for having distinctly mixed feelings.

When the Congolese playwright Jean-Louis Ntadi looks down on London next week from the London Eye, he could be forgiven for having distinctly mixed feelings.

His play The Cries of the Cricket is a centrepiece of Cafédirect's Flight 5065 Festival, the spectacular celebration of African culture that will take place in advance of the G8 summit, and will feature the work of African and British musicians and writers, with a smattering of such celebrities of the arts community as Damon Albarn, Beth Orton and Turin Brakes.

Below the pod in which his play is being performed, Ntadi will be able see the various august, solid buildings - the Houses of Parliament, Whitehall, the Royal Courts of Justice - where decisions have been made that will affect not just his immediate future but his very survival.

Depending upon one's point of view, Jean-Louis Ntadi is a writer in trouble, a victim of human rights abuses who has turned to a civilised nation for help, or he is that most demonised figure of 21st century Britain, the bogus asylum-seeker.

Until now, those who have contact with him in Britain and have read his work have seen him as a victim while the Home Office have consistently portrayed him as bogus.

It was as a playwright that Ntadi first came to the notice of the Writers in Prison Committee of English PEN, the writers' organisation which campaigns for, and defends, free speech. He had expressed opposition to his government in Congo-Brazzaville. A play that he had written, Le Chef de l'Etat had been staged, then closed and he had been arrested and beaten up.

A few months later, the police returned. He was imprisoned for 14 months and was tortured three times during that time. He has been handicapped from birth and it was, he says, his deformed leg to which electrodes were attached.

Normally, the work of PEN consists of protesting loudly, and sometimes effectively, to foreign governments. In this case, the problem was closer to hand. Ntadi had escaped on a false visa and had landed at Heathrow in February 2004, claiming to be a businessman. He had £20 and $20 (£11) in his pocket, knew no one in England and did not speak English.

His stay in the country, upon whose mercy he had thrown himself, has been the stuff of nightmares. He was disbelieved from the start. On four occasions, immigration officials have attempted unsuccessfully to put him on a plane. His terrified resistance has earned him a reputation - absurd to anyone who has met him and has seen his physical state - for violence.

He has been in five detention centres, including Belmarsh and Harmondsworth, which was partially burnt down after a riot among some of the other asylum-seekers.

When I met Ntadi, he was in Campsfield, near Oxford. A neat, polite, rather frail man, he was bewildered by what had happened to him but sustained by a passionately held Christian faith - he had marked Easter by writing a long poem on the subject of the resurrection.

Those who have got to know Ntadi - among them the writer Trevor Mostyn, a Catholic priest, another regular visitor of asylum-seekers - have vouched for his genuineness and integrity, but the Home Office has remained implacable. The flaws in his case, as seen from Whitehall, have varied from month to month. He arrived on false papers, they pointed out, as if a torture victim should nonetheless remember to go through the correct channels.

His problems in the Congo were caused, he has said, by his being a member of the Red Cross, his supporting the opposition and writing his play. The Home Office, in its wisdom, has argued that this is all unacceptably confused.

Meanwhile, its own case has been characterised by misdating interviews, by inaccurate translations of what he has said and by the sense that, as soon as Ntadi or his friends prove one point (his Red Cross papers were found to be in the possession of the Campsfield office), another argument against him will be found.

In March, having spent over a year in jail, Ntadi attended a bail hearing in Birmingham. In spite of the presence of character witnesses, the judge dismissed him as a serial liar and rejected his application. The following month, the novelist Hari Kunzru mentioned his case while receiving a prize at the British Book Awards, an event that was noted in the diary of this newspaper. As a result, Flight 5056 commissioned a play from him for its festival.

The effect on the Home Office has been magical. The man who weeks before was deemed too untrustworthy for bail is now living free in a communal home in Oxford. But seeing his play produced on 21 June may be one of his last acts in Britain. It is likely that, in the near future, a gentle, religious man who happened to write in opposition to his government, who came to Britain for help and has since behaved perfectly well, will be sent back to face torture or worse.

Ntadi has no wish to make his future in Britain but simply wants to return to the Congo when the political climate changes there. Until then, he would be prepared to live anywhere so long as he can worship, study and write. That we now have a Labour government willing to deport a man under these circumstances is a matter for real shame.

terblacker@aol.com