A flight chartered to send asylum seekers from the UK to Rwanda as part of a new government policy was grounded following an intervention by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). The plan to deport asylum seekers for processing in Rwanda is intended, the government says, to deter people from making the dangerous journey across the Channel to the UK. This first flight had been scheduled to take off on June 14 with just seven passengers on board. There had been more due to fly but legal action enabled them to be removed.
This decision has already sparked a very negative reaction from the UK government, which says that plans for future flights are already underway.
The ECHR issued specific interim measures ordering the UK authorities not to remove one of the asylum seekers for three weeks after the final decision of judicial proceedings that are ongoing in the UK. This in turn triggered national legal mechanisms that prevented the other six from flying to Rwanda. Although the measures indicated are temporary, the ECHR can choose to extend them.
