“Return at Any Cost” Is Breach of Rights

The planes disgorge their human cargo after dark, when Ndjili airport, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, becomes one of the bleakest places on Earth.

It is to Ndjili, near the capital Kinshasa, that Britain and other European countries send Congolese asylum seekers whose applications have been rejected, an increasingly common event in recent months, say human rights groups.

The would-be refugees are led from the jets on to the runway by a handful of escorts. The escorts then hand them over to the Congolese authorities and an uncertain fate. The little information that comes out of the war-ravaged country suggests that many end up in windowless jails run by the feared National Security Agency. From these dark cells they are transferred to Makala Central Prison, dubbed 'the morgue'. The US State Department reported that 69 people died in Makala in 2003 as a result of beatings, starvation and disease.

'According to reports from returning asylum seekers, as well as from agents of the director-general of migration (DGM), deportees are held in small cells at the airport,' said Congolese human rights activist Rene Kabala Mushiya. 'There are no windows and no light. From here, they are called in to the director of the DGM for interrogation.'.

A report to be published tomorrow by the Institute of Race Relations, a London- based charity, suggests Britain is breaching the Geneva conventions by sending asylum seekers back to conflict zones. It quotes the fate of 13 men flown from the UK who were immediately detained at Kinshasa. One of them, who eventually made it back to Britain, told the institute they were beaten daily by up to six soldiers. The man who escaped says that he was raped six times.

It is no surprise, then, that Willy Mpasi Mutwadi is praying the British authorities decide not to send him back.

Mutwadi was a clinical biologist at a hospital in Kinshasa. In 2003 he was asked to help the security services to murder leading opposition politicians. He was chosen because he was active in opposition politics and had the means to administer lethal injections and falsify hospital medical records.

'Fabulous rewards were offered to me, and a great deal of pressure was applied by the security services to accept this commission, but as a Christian and a medical professional I had to refuse,' he said. 'I was asked to rethink my decision, and knew that if I remained in Congo I would be killed. I fled immediately to priests who could protect me until arrangements could be made to get me out quickly.

'The security services killed my brother, Kakesa, when he was unable to give them information regarding my whereabouts.'

Mutwadi was smuggled to the UK, where he immediately claimed asylum, which was rejected. Throughout 2004 the Home Office tried to send him back, only to fail after interventions by politicians and Amnesty International. Now on bail, he is awaiting the outcome of a judicial review of the Home Office's decision. 'My return to Congo would result in my immediate death,' he said.'

The British government used to have a policy of not returning asylum seekers to Congo, such were the concerns about the conflict tearing the country apart. The Foreign Office website advises against all travel tothe area. But in a clear bid to assuage public concerns about asylum seekers, the government has started returning would-be refugees to Congo and other conflict zones thought too dangerous for UK citizens.

'There was a time when a number of countries were considered no-go areas. But now Somalia, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan and Iraq are not even considered dangerous,' said Lord Avebury, the Liberal Democrat spokesman on Africa in the Lords.

Home Office figures show that 65 people were returned to Congo from the UK last year, 105 to Zimbabwe, 150 to Somalia, 760 to Iraq and 795 to Afghanistan. Many would have been asylum seekers sent back against their will.

'In the case of Zimbabwe, we know of cases where people have it in writing that they will be interrogated when they return and we are still sending them back,' said Jean Lambert, an MEP and Green party spokeswoman on asylum issues.

Part of the problem stems from a paucity of intelligence. A report by the Immigration Advisory Service questioned the quality of analysis of more than 20 reports produced by the Home Office Country Information and Policy Unit. The UK government decided Somalia was safe on the basis of a report which had to be produced in Kenya because its authors thought the country was too dangerous for them to enter.

Their fears were justified. Abdinassir Abdulatif, a Somali forcibly returned by the Dutch authorities, was murdered last June after being kidnapped in the capital, Mogadishu. The institute will use its report to argue that, by sending asylum seekers back to war-torn countries, Britain is breaching the Geneva convention which says 'no state shall expel or return a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, [or] membership of a particular group or political opinion'.

But this is unlikely to have an impact on a government keen to keep asylum issues off the election agenda and which shows signs of adopting a tougher stance. The Home Office is already drawing up plans to automatically deny refugee status to anyone deemed to have committed a 'serious crime' - from car theft to possessing illegal drugs.

The Home Office maintains each case is considered on its merits and no one is sent back if their life would be in danger. But human rights groups reject the claim.

'The Home Office seems to be moving towards a "return at any cost" policy,' said Steve Ballinger of Amnesty International. 'These people are seen as a problem to be got rid of. There seems to be little regard for their safety.'