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Failed asylum seekers 'attacked'
14.07.08
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Hundreds of failed asylum seekers say they have been assaulted by security teams contracted by the Home Office to deport them, according to a report.
The report presents findings from a dossier of nearly 300 assaults, alleged to have taken place between January 2004 and June 2008.
The incidents include allegations of beatings and racial abuse. Injuries range from handcuff-bruised wrists, to swollen faces, to fractured ribs, wrists and ankles.
The abuse has been detailed by groups co-ordinating the representation and medical care of failed asylum-seekers.
The report says: "This dossier provides evidence of widespread and seemingly systematic abuse of one of the most vulnerable communities of people in our society.
"We consider the evidence in this report reveals what may amount to state sanctioned violence, for which ultimate responsibility lies with the Home Office."
The publication of the report follows similar allegations made in October 2007.
Former chief inspector of prisons, Lord David Ramsbotham, who wrote the foreword to the report, said : "(The Home Office) should recognise that our national reputation is not something to be treated lightly or wantonly, and that, if even one of the cases is substantiated, that amounts to something of a preventable national disgrace."
Dr Frank Arnold, a volunteer doctor with Medical Justice, said: "I have seen many serious injuries with long lasting effects, crushing of nerves at the wrist from forceful pulling on handcuffs, limitation of neck movement by patients whose heads were pushed under aircraft seats, numbness of the face after blows around the cheek and eye."
The report, Outsourcing Abuse, was written by Birnberg Peirce & Partners, Medical Justice and the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns (NCADC). The authors say the accounts are just the "tip of the iceberg".
