Asylum-seekers claim British immigration officers forced them to meet Sudanese officials, says christopher thompson |
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T he Home Office is so eager to repatriate asylum seekers from Darfur that it has allowed officials from the Sudan embassy to interrogate Darfuris in the presence of British immigration officers, according to three refugees, still in London, who have spoken to The First Post.
"I was given no choice," one of the Darfuris said. "The man from the embassy said that the Home Office had asked him to investigate me on their behalf," said another.
The participation of Sudanese officials flies in the face of all recommended procedures for dealing with political refugees. And the deportations run against the advice from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees who has declared that Darfuri asylum-seekers returned to Khartoum face the prospect of jail, torture or death.
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| Bashir fled to Britain after Sudanese government planes bombed his village, killing his father and mother |
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The government of Sudan has been accused by the United States of conducting a genocide in the Darfur region, in an effort to put down a local insurgency by anti-government rebels who belong mainly to three groups, the SLA, the JEM and the SLM.
Khartoum has bombed villages in Darfur and used proxy militias - the infamous Arab horsemen, the Janjaweed - to slaughter villagers in a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Two million people have been displaced as a result and the number of Africans killed is estimated to be 300,000, if not higher.
The claim that Sudanese embassy officials have been allowed access to asylum-seekers has brought immediate condemnation from refugee watchdogs and human rights campaigners.
David Brown, spokesman for genocide watchdog the Aegis Trust, said he had heard the allegations and that if it was true that immigration officers gave the Darfuris no choice but to meet the Sudanese, then it was illegal under asylum rules. The Home Office, he said, would be "working hand-in-glove 
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