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UK: Criminalising solidarity

01 May 1999

A man, Mr D, who had helped his friends get to the UK to enable them to claim asylum was locked up for five months before being acquitted of a criminal offence. The dual Libyan-Irish national bought airline tickets so that his friends, a Libyan dissident and his family, could come to the UK to claim asylum. The friends did not try to come in clandestinely or use deception, they presented themselves to immigration officials, explained their situation and claimed asylum. But Mr D, who had accompanied the family on their flight, found himself under arrest, by virtue of a section of the 1996 Immigration and Asylum Act which criminalises the "facilitation of the entry of asylum-seekers". The section stipulates that actions are not an offence if they are done by a refugee organisation or done "otherwise than for gain" but the police and immigration authorities said that, since Mr D admitted bringing the family to the UK, he had to prove that he did not do it for gain. And despite the friend's confirmation that Mr D had paid for the tickets, they not only charged him but kept him in custody awaiting trial. At the trial, at Harrow Crown Court in north-west London in April, Mr D won the legal argument, with the judge ruling that he did not have to prove that he did not gain, but it was for the Crown to prove that he did. Mr D was acquitted but he and his Dublin-based wife and children had suffered enforced separation for over five months owing to his detention.