A group of more than 60 asylum seekers were unlawfully detained by the UK on the remote island of Diego Garcia, a judge has ruled.
The asylum seekers, who are Sri Lankan Tamils, arrived at the island in October 2021 after their boat got into distress while en route from Sri Lanka to Canada, where they were hoping to claim asylum.
The Tamils were held for years in a small fenced-off camp on the island, which is the site of a secretive UK-US military base. Earlier this month they were brought to the UK, in move described by the government as a “one-off due to the exceptional nature of these cases”.
Diego Garcia is the largest island in the Chagos archipelago, a group of more than 60 islands halfway between Tanzania and Indonesia.
The US has been using the area for defence purposes since 1966 and Diego Garcia is a key strategic location for military operations in the Indian Ocean.
Now acting judge of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) Supreme Court, Margaret Obi, has ruled that it was unlawful for the UK to detain the asylum seekers on the island. The UK government had tried to argue that the Tamils were not being detained but Justice Obi dismissed this, saying it “does not bear scrutiny”.
The Tamils were housed in military tents in a fenced camp which was guarded at all times. Justice Obi described it as a prison “in all but name”.
She concluded: “As a matter of objective fact and in law the claimants are being detained and have been detained since their arrival on Diego Garcia.” The judgement found that all 61 individuals, including 16 children, were unlawfully detained.
She criticised the commissioner for failing to show why it was necessary for the Tamil asylum seekers to be detained.
Justice Obi added: “This is no evidence that greater access to the parts of the island that are not militarily sensitive will cause immediate and/or significant risk of harm and there are reasonable alternative ways of securing the safety and security of the facility.”
Lawyers for Leigh Day, who represented six of the claimants, said that the migrants’ situation had become so dire that there were recurring attempts at suicide and self-harm.
Solicitor Tom Short said: “The judgement is a deeply damning indictment of the BIOT administration’s handling of the situation.
“The BIOT’s troubling failures are characterised by the court’s finding that one [now former] deputy commissioner ‘appeared to have only a limited appreciation of the fundamental importance of liberty’.”
The judgement comes after the UK announced it would give up sovereignty of the Chagos Islands, which includes Diego Garcia, to Mauritius in a historic move.
The deal has been criticised over concerns over its potential security impact, with Donald Trump seeking to veto the pact.
