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UK: Refugee sues Home Office under Human Rights Act

01 November 2000

An Algerian refugee whose asylum claim was upheld by the Appeals Tribunal in 1997, is suing the Home Office for imprisoning him unlawfully for the last three months of his 19 months detention. The appellant argues that the Home Office was in possession of all the information that led the tribunal to uphold his claim. Further, the 28 year old had been handcuffed and moved from the detention centre at Campsfield House near Oxford to a prison in Birmingham, after he had complained that the detention centre was run like a prison by the private security firm Group 4. Barrister Andrew Nicol QC said that the new provisions introduced under the Human Rights Act provided for the right to sue against unlawful detention and commented, "I would hope the Home Office think long and hard about who they detain. Locking people up is a serious matter". At a recent Barbed Wire Europe Conference (see Statewatch vol 10 nos 3 & 4) in Oxford the Close Down Campsfield Campaign and other European anti-detention activists called for a European-wide campaign and day of action in protest at the practice of immigration detention in Europe. The campaign is working towards the wholesale abolition of immigration detention in the EU.

Guardian 14.10.00; see also www.closecampsfield.org.uk