The sister of an Iranian Kurdish man who had his deportation to Rwanda cancelled at the last minute on Tuesday has recalled the joy and trepidation she felt hearing the news.
“I don’t know if my brother and I can take all this suffering again,” she told The Independent.
The government’s first deportation flight to Rwanda was grounded on Tuesday night after the European Court of Human Rights granted injunctions to some of the asylum seekers on the plane.
Recalling the moment she heard that her brother would not be deported, she said: “When I heard about the ticket being cancelled I started to shout and cry. It was happy tears but at the same time, deep down, I was worried that if this happened I don’t know if my brother and I could take all this suffering again.”
Home secretary Priti Patel has vowed that preparation for the next deportation flight “begins now”.
Cabinet minister Therese Coffey said this morning that she was “highly confident” that the government will be able to go ahead with its policy despite the ECHR’s intervention.
The Iranian arrived in the UK around five weeks ago having fled his home country due to political persecution. His journey took him through Turkey where he was abused by human traffickers, his sister said.
An application made by his lawyers to remove him from the Rwanda flight was rejected by the High Court on Tuesday morning, despite his lawyers appealing on mental health grounds and highlighting his relationship with his sister in the UK.
In a short ruling Justice Swift refused to grant interim relief, saying: “The Secretary of State was entitled to reach the decisions she did.”
In a tense night on Tuesday, the Iranian told his sister at 9:38pm that he was about to go onto the plane. In an earlier call with her, he had said: “Just tell my family I love them, I’m really sorry for everything.”
He was taken onto the flight, where he saw at least two other asylum seekers. They were sat apart and with at least ten seats between them.
After an hour of silence, his sister heard from their lawyers that her brother’s plane ticket had been cancelled. She called him at 10:12pm eager to share the news but was told by one of the plane crew that they had no confirmation of this right to removal.
At 10:20pm the man called to share the news that he would be taken off the flight and would no longer be deported to Rwanda.
His sister, who has been resident in the UK since 2010, told The Independent: “I hope no one goes through what we have been through. I really don’t know how to express my feelings, there are no words to describe it.
“After all the suffering and trauma that my brother has been through, I feel like he doesn’t deserve this. No deserves this.”
Following the news that her brother would not be taken to Rwanda, she said that she couldn’t sleep. “I had nightmares,” she said.
She described her brother’s detention as like a jail and said the constant threat of being sent to Rwanda was “torturing him”.
“Thinking about what might happen to my brother in the future is really worrying me,” she added.
