Afghan man 'scared to go outside' after U.K. deported him to Kabul despite court injunction
A judge has ordered the U.K. Home Office to immediately return an Afghan asylum-seeker who was sent to Kabul against his will despite a court injunction halting his deportation.
Samim Bigzad, 22, who fears he will be killed by the Taliban in Afghanistan, was taken out of a London detention centre Tuesday morning without warning and sent to Istanbul on a Turkish Airlines flight.
While he was awaiting his connecting flight to Kabul, a judge issued a court injunction ordering immigration officials to immediately return him to U.K. so his lawyers could appeal his deportation order based on new evidence.
- AS IT HAPPENS: Bigzad saved by last-minute court injunction
But officials put him plane to Kabul anyway, where he remains holed up in a hotel room.
"He's frightened right now. He's waiting for someone to tell him what's going on, and no one's telling him anything. We're trying to keep him calm," Bigzad's lawyer Jamie Bell told As It Happens. "He feels anxious, and he feels unsafe. He's scared to go outside."
Bigzad has claimed the Taliban threatened to kill him should he ever return to his home country, where his construction work for U.S. and British companies made him a target.
His father, now a U.K. citizen who lives in Margate, England, was kidnapped and tortured by the Taliban in the '90s, and still suffers from PTSD. Bigzad was his primary caregiver.
"The Taliban, they don't mess around," Bridget Chapman, Bigzad's friend who works with refugees in the U.K., told As It Happens last month. "If they make a threat, they really mean it, and I know young people who have seen relatives executed in front of them."
Bigzad narrowly avoided deportation once before on Aug. 26 when a Turkish Airlines pilot refused to fly the plane with him on it.
- AS IT HAPPENS: Pilot won't asylum-seeker to 'certain death'
Bell said he plans to pursue a contempt of court case against the U.K. government.
In the meantime, High Court Judge Robert Maurice Jay has issued a second order to the Home Office, demanding they return Bigzad on the "next scheduled or chartered flight on which space is available."
Jay also gave the Home Office until Friday to explain why Bigzad was sent to Kabul despite the court injunction.
The British government sent 284 people back to Afghanistan last year, the Independent reports. Despite continued Taliban and al-Qaeda attacks on the ground, the country has been ruled officially safe for returns.
Neither the Home Office nor Turkish Airlines have returned As It Happens' request for comment.