A plane expected to take the first asylum seekers to Rwanda has been seen at an airfield. The Boeing 767 was spotted at at MoD Boscombe Down on the outskirts of Amesbury, Wiltshire.
The aircraft is owned by Spanish airline Privilege Style and flew from Dusseldorf to the military base. The company has a permit to fly from Stansted to the Rwandan capital, Kigali, at 9.30pm tonight, according to Civil Aviation Authority records.
Just seven people are due to be on board the flight after a number were removed following legal challenges and reviews by the Home Office – of those seven, lawyers representing three are seeking an order to prevent their removal to Rwanda. Ministers are vowing the flight will go ahead - even if there is just one passenger.
Privilege Style has been criticised for its involvement in the Rwanda programme, which sparked a protest outside its Spanish headquarters in Mallorca on today.
The demonstration by British charity Freedom from Torture saw protesters chant “stop the flights” and unveil a banner which read: “Privilege Style: Stop tearing families apart.” Torture survivor and charity ambassador Kolbassia Haoussou said: “In the last week alone, people in the UK have made hundreds of calls and sent over 30,000 letters to airlines suspected of involvement in the UK Government’s cruel Rwanda scheme.
“Privilege Style thought they could ignore us, so we travelled to their headquarters in Mallorca to give them the message directly. Across the UK, everyone from people protesting in the streets to the heir to throne have spoken out against this neocolonial ‘cash for humans’ policy.”
The airline has not yet commented. The site is managed by QinetiQ, the private defence company created as part of the breakup of the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) in 2001 by the UK Ministry of Defence.
