Afghan asylum seeker released
by Adrian Troughton
An Afghan asylum seeker who was due to be deported has been released from detention.
Campaigners yesterday said they were delighted after Abdul Ghafar Rajabali arrived back in Leicester.
The 23-year-old, who feared he would be killed if sent back to Afghanistan, was taken to a detention centre near Gatwick airport 10 days ago.
However, the Home Office yesterday confirmed he had been released temporarily and that his case was being reviewed.
Pam Inder, chairman of the Leicester City of Sanctuary group, which has been working with Mr Rajabali, said all Mr Rajabali’s supporters were “very happy”.
She said: “We understand it is only a temporary release but it is always better not to be in prison than be in prison.
“Abdul’s position is still very precarious. At least he knows he is with friends.
“I have spoken to him on the phone and will see him in the next few days.”
Mr Rajabali’s parents and family were murdered when he was a baby.
He entered Britain illegally as a traumatised 16-year-old in August 2006, after fleeing to escape being forced to fight for the Taliban.
He applied for asylum but was turned down and started living rough in Leicester.
Mr Rajabali was detained on May 10 by the Border Agency. He was released on Wednesday night and arrived back in Leicester early yesterday morning.
Ms Inder said Mr Rajabali has been overwhelmed by the support he has received from people in Leicester.
She said: “He was very emotional when I spoke to him and he said he was very grateful for all the support from everyone in Leicester.
“As I understand it, he will have to have an interview with Home Office officials in the next few days and could even be re-detained.
“I must stress that this is not a solution to this matter and that it could rumble on for years before we get a final decision on whether Abdul can stay in this country.”
Leicester City of Sanctuary has helped Mr Rajabali in his dealings with the Border Agency. The group started an e-petition calling on Home Secretary Teresa May to stop his deportation, which has so far been backed by more than 3,500 people.
Leicester South MP Jon Ashworth, who took up Mr Rajabali’s case with the Home Office, welcomed the news he had been released from detention.
He said: “I am pleased that Mr Rajabali has been released from the detention centre and is back in Leicester with friends and supporters.
“We shall carry on supporting him in his fight to stay in the UK.”
A Home Office spokesman confirmed Mr Rajabali had been released on Wednesday.
He said: “Mr Rajabali was released from detention after providing further information in relation to his case, which is now being considered.”
This article appears in today's Leicester Mercury:
Asylum seeker's friends hoping for late reprieve
by Tom Mack
Supporters of a failed asylum seeker from Afghanistan are hoping for a last minute victory as he prepares to be deported.
Yesterday, Abdul Ghafar Rajabali, 23, was moved to a detention centre near Gatwick Airport ready to be flown out of the UK.
The news came as a shock to his friends in Leicester.
At the same time on Sunday afternoon, about 60 of his supporters gathered in Victoria Park, Leicester, where they had planned to sing to Abdul down the telephone to show their support.
Colleen Molloy, who helped organised Sunday’s event, said: “It was quite traumatic.
“We had all come together to make one final plea for him and we rang him up hoping to sing to him.
“We thought he was still at the detention centre in Lincolnshire.
“We couldn’t get through when we tried his phone and a while later we got a call to say he was being transported to a detention centre at Gatwick Airport, which was why his phone was off.
“He never got to hear the crowds singing for him.”
Orphan Abdul fled to Leicester when he was 16, in August 2006, to escape being forced to fight for the Taliban rebels in his home country.
He fears that he will be killed if he is sent back because he has converted to Christianity.
He went through the usual channels to apply for asylum but after missing an important appointment he went on the run from the authorities and lived rough, eventually ending up in Leicester.
He was detained on May 10 by the Borders Agency.
Speaking to the Leicester Mercury from the Lincolnshire detention centre last week, Abdul said: “I am scared. I cannot go back to Afghanistan, I will be killed because I am now a Christian.
“I love England and I love Leicester.”
Colleen said lawyers were still hoping to stop Abdul being put on a plane home.
She said: “He has a legal team and they’re still working on his case and they’re hoping to get a reprieve at the last minute.
“Abdul’s only ambition is to be at peace.
“He arrived here alone and terrified and he is the sweetest, kindest, gentlest person you could know and he is feeling not just stressed about what he expects to be his impending death if he’s returned to Afghanistan, but all about all the people he misses so much in Leicester.”
Supporter Dave Jones, 23, of Leicester city centre, who used to play football with Abdul in Victoria Park every weekend, said: “Abdul is really integrated here and he’s one of us.
“He’s been let down by the authorities time and time again and now they want to send him to Afghanistan - it just makes no sense.”
A Home Office spokesperson said the Government and the courts were satisfied there was no reason to allow Abdul to stay in the UK.
This article appears in today's Leicester Mercury:
If I'm sent back to Kabul I will be killed
by Tim Healy
Campaigners are calling for a 23-year-old failed Afghani asylum-seeker to be allowed to remain in Leicester, saying he will be killed if he is deported.
Abdul Ghafar Rajabali's parents and family were murdered when he was a baby, and he entered Britain illegally as a traumatised 16-year-old in August 2006 after fleeing.
He applied for asylum but was turned down and started living rough.
He was later found destitute by the Red Cross.
Because he has extreme post-traumatic stress syndrome and a medical condition which, say campaigners, could not be treated in Afghanistan, Mr Rajabali was allowed to stay in the UK while his medical case was reviewed.
However, that permission ended last week and when he attended a routine reporting session with the immigration authorities in Loughborough on Friday, he was detained by UK Border Agency staff.
Mr Rajabali, who has converted to Christianity, was taken to Morton Hall Detention Centre, in Lincolnshire, and faces being put on a flight to Kabul at midnight on Tuesday.
The Leicester City of Sanctuary group, which has been working with Mr Rajabali, has launched an e-petition calling on Home Secretary Teresa May to stop his deportation.
It has so far been backed by more than 1,100 people.
The group said he was wrongly treated as an adult when he arrived in the UK, and was put at a disadvantage because the translator used by the UK Border Agency did not understand the dialect he spoke.
He also inadvertently missed an asylum hearing and, fearing he would be deported as a result, went under the radar of the authorities which resulted in him living on the streets.
The group said Mr Rajabali was preparing a claim for asylum "based on new evidence" when he was detained, and wants him released so the application can be heard.
Speaking from the detention centre, Mr Rajabali said: "I am scared. I cannot go back to Afghanistan, I will be killed because I am now a Christian.
"Not only will the Taliban kill me, but other religious groups too. I love England and I love Leicester. The police are very good here. They do not hit you if you ask a question."
Pam Inder, chairman of Leicester City of Sanctuary, said Mr Rajabali had "touched the hearts of everyone who knows him" in Leicester.
She said: "Abdul is an illegal immigrant, but he is a very special person. He is intelligent and kind and would be a very good addition to our society."
She said Mr Rajabali would be killed if he went back to Afghanistan, a country where he has no family does not know anyone who could help him.
A Home Office spokesperson said: "Every asylum application is carefully considered on a case by case basis.
"The UK only returns individuals if both the Home Office and the courts are satisfied they do not need our protection and have no legal basis to remain in the country.
"Mr Rajabali's case has been considered and rejected by the courts and he failed to attend an appeal hearing before an independent judge."
Filming plight of destitute Sikhs
A filmmaker has returned from Afghanistan after filming a documentary to highlight the country's segregated Sikh society.
Bobby Singh, of Syston, flew to Kabul in January to shoot a documentary about the Gudwara Har Rai Sahib – a Sikh temple which has become home to about 1,000 displaced people.
The historic place of worship is riddled with thousands of bullet holes from US and Taliban fighters.
Writer Bobby, 43, spent a week with a film crew from Birmingham television channel Sikh TV.
He said: "I wanted to highlight the dwindling Sikh community in Afghanistan, which has dropped from about 60,000 to a mere 1,000."Most Sikhs have fled the country to places like London, India and Canada.
"But the few who remain are ostracised by the Afghans and have become destitute – forced to live within the confines of their temple.
"They do not go outside the walls of the temple. Their whole lives are spent there."
The three-part documentary will be aired on Sikh TV in April.
It includes interviews with Afghan Sikh families and those confined to the temple.
One man, 26-year-old Narinder Singh, said: "Life is not the same as it was decades back.
"Most of the rich Sikh families have fled and today only the poor Sikhs remain within the gurdwara complex as they are unable to afford their own properties. There are no schools for the children or any teachers here.
"Children spend most of their time doing virtually nothing and so are void of any education."
Narinder said due to the lack of education, young Sikh children had no future while they remained in Kabul.
Bobby said he was planning to submit the documentary for a number of film festivals, including events in Toronto, Qatar and Sheffield.
This is Manzoor Moghal's First Person column in today's Leicester Mercury:
Understanding the history of religious conflict
A lack of knowledge will hinder peace efforts, believes Manzoor Moghal
The extremists in the world of Islam spring from the school of thought that emerged in India after the Great Indian Mutiny of 1857 known to Indian Nationalists as the first war of Indian Independence.
The Mughal Emperors of India who ruled for over 300 years mostly treated Hindus as equal partners in their governance of the country, which evolved a strong bond between their Hindu and Muslim subjects in their loyalty to the Emperors.
The British systematically destroyed this pluralism and successfully used the strategy of divide and rule by pitching Muslims against Hindus and Sikhs and vice versa.
After putting down the uprising they slaughtered thousands of Indian Muslims. As a consequence the Muslims became disillusioned with the whole concept of Pluralism and broadly divided into two groups.
The Anglophile Sir Syed Ahmed Khan believed that the best way for the advancement of Muslims in India was for them to acquire Western education, and founded the Aligarh Anglo Mohammedan Oriental College later known as Aligarh Muslim University.
The other group who were the followers of Shah Waliullah, a Wahabist founded the Deobandi school of thought in 1866 in Deoband.
Their principle ethos was to create a pure Islamic society unadulterated by any Hindu and Western practices. They believed that it was the dilution of Islam with Hindu and Western values that had resulted in the demise of Muslim rule in India.
It is from Deoband that Madrasahs across Pakistan and Afghanistan sprang up, teaching their extremist brand of Islam. From this erupted the repressive regime of the Taliban in 1996. Afghanistan then became the crucible for Al Qaeda who unleashed a most ferocious attack against the West in retaliation of their invasion of Muslim countries.
Historically Islam and the West have been locked in conflict for centuries. The West continues its aggression by attacking and invading Muslim countries and treating Muslims as fiends because of the violent extremism from the likes of Al Qaida. Western foreign policy towards Muslim countries provides fertile breeding ground for violent Muslim extremism. American and European foreign policies in dealing with Muslim countries are seen by Muslims as deliberately provocative and anti-Islam. Unfortunately, Western actions backfire and continue to aggravate matters between the two opposing camps.
Unless the phenomena of extremism is fully understood in its true historical contacts and genuine efforts are made for rapprochement between the two sides, there seems to be little hope of any solution.
