Asylum seeker wins £100,000 after being ‘treated like a criminal’ by Home Office

An asylum seeker has been awarded £100,000 by the Home Office aft claiming she was ‘treated similar a criminal’ aft overstaying successful Britain.

Nadra Almas came to the UK from Pakistan connected a pupil visa successful 2004, and claimed she was incapable to instrumentality location due to the fact that her Christian religion would spot her look ill-treatment and persecution.

In 2018 she was handcuffed and detained by Home Office officials who told her she would beryllium deported, but she was released 2 weeks later.

The government past took astir 3 years to assistance her exile status, and forbid her from uncovering enactment oregon claiming benefits during that time.

During this play she had to trust connected friends and household to get by, an acquisition that ‘undermined her self-esteem and caused her embarrassment’.

A tribunal heard that Ms Almaras made six applications to enactment successful the UK betwixt 2005 and 2014.

Her son, who was aged 26 astatine the time, was besides granted exile presumption successful 2018 connected the aforesaid grounds connected which Ms Almas had applied.

Her attraction during this was a breach of her close to a household beingness nether the Human Rights Act, a hudge ruled.

Recorder McNeill told the court: ‘She could not travel, she could not determination freely, she could not make her backstage and household beingness due to the fact that her presumption was uncertain, and she could not enactment oregon assertion nationalist funds and had to trust connected the small enactment from the asylum system.

‘She was wholly incapable to enactment and her location beingness was affected by the anxiousness she felt pursuing her play of detention, feeling similar a transgression and not a bully idiosyncratic with her friends and household due to the fact that she had been detained.’

The tribunal besides heard that during her two-week detention, Ms Almas was ‘handcuffed and detained, imprisoned successful a country with 2 men she did not cognize and told she was going to beryllium flown backmost to Pakistan’.

McNeill described her attraction during the detention arsenic ‘outrageous’ and that officials showed ‘a reckless disregard for her rights’.

She added: ‘The rights astatine involvement were the astir basal rights of liberty of the individual. [Ms Almas] feared returning to Pakistan for reasons of her religion and idiosyncratic safety, which she intelligibly expressed to [the Home office] connected being detained, and was, indeed, successful owed people granted exile status, frankincense vindicating the genuineness of her fears.’

Ms Almas was subsequently awarded compensation totalling £98,757.04 aft the tribunal ruled that her quality rights were breached by her conditions.

The Government tried to entreaty the decision, but this was aboriginal dismissed by Justice Ritchie who said that the ‘breaches were not trivial oregon minor’.

‘In my judgment, the Recorder’s rulings connected unlawful detention owed to breaches of argumentation were logical, supported by the grounds and her unchallenged findings of fact,’ Justice Ritchie said during his ruling. ‘These breaches were not trivial oregon minor.’

The damages awarded were appropriate, helium added.

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