The Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill, currently going through the Commons, creates a new immigration status for undeportable ‘foreign nationals’. The Home Office’s failure to trace the whereabouts of a small number of non-British criminal offenders post-sentence back, in July 2006, led to a rule change in the same month, introducing a presumption in favour
Trial begins of Harmondsworth 4
On Monday 14 January 2008, the trial will begin of four men facing charges in connection with a disturbance at Harmondsworth removal centre in west London in November 2006. Harmondsworth is run by private company Kalyx, a subsidiary of Sodexho. The disturbance is said to have occurred after guards, allegedly, stopped detainees at the centre
Evidence on assaults and abuse during deportation collected
A coalition of groups assisting asylum seekers, including Medical Justice and the National Coalition of Anti Deportation Campaigns, is collecting information on alleged cases of assault during removal. The information required for the study is detailed in the document (available at the link below) but includes a person’s name or initials; the date of alleged
White man sentenced for murder
On 11 December, Peter Connolly was sentenced to life – with a minimum term of fifteen years in prison – for the murder of Christopher Alaneme, an 18-year-old who died after being stabbed in Sheerness, Kent on 21 April 2006. That night, Christopher, whose Nigerian family had moved from London to Kent because they felt
Condemning the unborn
British asylum policies are condemning increasing numbers of children to illness, poverty and deprivation before they are even born. On the top floor of a high-rise flat in Leeds a young mother sits with her newborn child. Unlike most new mothers she is not surrounded by cards and flowers. Nor is she surrounded by well-wishers.
Eight-year sentence for killing
A 21-year-old Preston man has been sentenced to eight years in jail for the killing of Shezan Umarji in July 2006. Liam McKerney was found guilty of manslaughter at Preston Crown Court in a majority verdict and two other men – his brother Kieran and friend Lee Moore – were cleared of murder and manslaughter.
Teaching Black history: the struggle continues
In a lecture delivered to members of the Black and Asian Studies Association, one of its founders deplores the ethnocentrism and racism in education and society. The Black and Asian Studies Association (BASA) was formed in 1991 with the aim of encouraging research and disseminating information on the history of Black peoples in Britain. (By
Anti-Zionist Jews fight anti-Semitism charge
An action against the accusation of anti-Semitism brought by a prominent Jewish anti-Zionist in the UK has been settled out of court, but in Germany, the appeal court in Frankfurt recently upheld an accusation that an anti-Zionist holocaust survivor was in fact anti-Semitic and suffering from self-hatred. In the UK, in July 2007, Michael Ezra
What to do in the event of an asylum-seeker death
A guide on what to do in the event of the death of an asylum seeker has been published by the Institute of Race Relations. This 13-page briefing paper, Asylum deaths; what to do next (pdf file, 232kb), by Harmit Athwal, contains information as to where in the system asylum seekers are most at risk
Algeria seeks extradition of political refugee who denounced terror
An Algerian exile, with refugee rights in Germany, has been arrested in Spain and now faces extradition to Algeria. In 2003, former Algerian colonel Mohammed Samraoui – at the time a political refugee in Germany – published the book Chronique des années de sang (Denoël, Paris). Samraoui, who had deserted from the Department for Information