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Asylum seekers escape after dozy guards allowed cigarette break
Last updated at 07:52am on 14.12.06A failed asylum seeker is on the run after escaping deportation when he was allowed off a coach heading for the airport to have a cigarette.
The man was part of a group of a dozen men and women due to be thrown out of Britain on a specially chartered flight to Baku in Azerbaijan.
Yet incredibly when they approached Stansted airport in Essex where the plane was waiting, some of the men were allowed off to have a cigarette --- there was no smoking on the coach.
In what appeared to have been a pre-planned break, seven of the men are said to have tried to run off but all bar one were recaptured.
An Essex police helicopter and sniffer dogs joined the search but last night he had still not been recaptured.
A spokesman for Group 4 security, who were escorting the unidentified man to the airport, said yesterday an investigation was underway but refused to comment further.
He did not say why the men had been allowed off the coach to have a cigarette.
The escape and its circumstances are hugely embarrasing for the immigration authorities.
All the men had been refused political asylum and their appeals against the decision had been turned down.
To prevent them escaping, they had been held in detention centres at Colnbrook, near Heathrow, Campsfield in Oxfordshire, and Dover, Kent, --- some for several weeks.
An immigration officer specialising in rounding-up failed asylum seekers yesterday said : "We have issues with the way these men are escorted.
It takes considerable time and trouble to track down and 'house' them and to allow one to disappear in such circumstances is really sickening."
He added ironically : "I suppose it is Christmas time and the word 'Pantomine' comes to mind...quite appropriate when someone disappeared after a puff of smoke."
The case comes five months after Group 4 security was forced to launch an investigation into how a Somali asylum seeker convicted of sex attacks was able to slip his guards and escape from a van while being transported to a deportation hearing.
Even if the missing man is recaptured, he is likely to face a lengthy stay in custody while others are rounded-up before another plane is chartered by the Home Office.
It is understood the missing Azerbaijan man was not among those facing deportation after serving a prison sentence for crimes in Britain.
Details of the vanishing act came on the day Home Secretary John Reid admitted only 129 of the 1,013 convicts mistakenly freed in the foreign prisoner scandal has since been deported.
In the wake of the shambles, Ministers promised all of the overseas convicts would be tracked down and - wherever possible - booted out of the country.
But Lin Homer, director general of the immigration and nationality directorate, said only 129 had been sent home in the eight months since the scandal was first made public.
In a further 216 cases, officials have decided not to deport the criminals after all - in many cases because human rights law prevent them being removed to countries which are considered unsafe.
The Home Office admits it does not even know where a third of these criminals are - despite an eight-month manhunt.
Those who remain at large include one in the most serious category of offender - which includes murderers, rapists and armed robbers.
d.williams@dailymail.co.uk
Reader views (3)
That was an accident; accident happen all the time.
I have to salute the guy who had the courage to escape: the whole immigration policy is a shamble and every single human being has the right to seek a better life.
- Viz, UK,B'ham
As someone who works in the immigration sector, I can't say I'm surprised by this. It is but a microcosm of the uniquely British "shamateur" tendency of many organisations (and particularly anything linked with central or local government). Increasing legislation has also contributed to a total abdication of common sense.
- Ivan Tan, London
What a joke!
- Mark Ward, London UK
