London, United Kingdom — A Somali man forcibly returned to Mogadishu from the UK under a controversial new scheme to send home failed asylum seekers has described how he was punched and kicked by the British guards who accompanied him, and left him bleeding in a cell after having a tooth knocked out. The man, who did not want to be identified because he fears for his safety, also told Al Jazeera how he was restrained in handcuffs for most of his journey aboard the Turkish Airlines flights via Istanbul, and pressured by his escorts to sign a document stating that he had returned to his homeland voluntarily.
Speaking by telephone from the Somali capital, he said he was resigned to dying in a city that is still plagued by ambushes and bombings and considered unacceptably dangerous for returning refugees by most humanitarian organisations. The man is the first individual confirmed to have been repatriated through a new removals programme that seeks to take advantage of recent legal judgments and changes to UK immigration policy , which mean that Somalis seeking asylum must successfully prove that they face a specific threat, rather than simply being at risk from indiscriminate violence.
Al Jazeera has learnt that another Somali man is due to be removed to Mogadishu via the same route on Tuesday. He said his ordeal began at midnight on May 3, when he was collected by guards from an immigration detention centre where he was in custody, driven to Heathrow Airport and seated at the back of an early-morning Turkish Airlines flight to Istanbul. As he struggled, shouted and cried, he said he was pushed and kicked by his escorts, and kept in handcuffs throughout the flight.
On arrival in Istanbul he was taken to a cell in the airport, accompanied by a Turkish immigration official. As he continued to struggle, he said his legs were kicked away, causing him to hit his face so violently that he lost a tooth. I asked to be treated, but nobody came to help me. The blood just kept flowing all over the floor of the cell. On the next leg of the journey, a Turkish Airlines flight to Mogadishu via Djibouti, he pleaded with his escorts to let him go to the toilet, but they still refused to release his hands.
My bones are aching. The man instead wrote in Somali that he had been forced to return against his will. Yet despite his protests, on arrival in Mogadishu he said he was registered by immigration officials as having returned voluntarily. Since then, he said he had simply been hoping to survive from day-to-day. In March, Al Jazeera identified at least six individuals who had been detained by UK immigration authorities pending removal to Somalia, and reported the story of one man who was flown as far as Istanbul before being returned to London when his solicitor secured a review of his case.
