‘It wasn’t an interview – it was an interrogation’: How asylum seekers are made to feel ‘like criminals’ during Home Office questioning

“As soon as we got into the room I felt as though I wasn’t welcome,” says Isaac*, an asylum seeker from Central Africa, as he remembers his interview with the Home Office three years ago. The young man, who was claiming asylum on the grounds that he was tortured in his home country for attending anti-government protests, had been nervous before arriving at the interview. He quickly discovered the process was even more nerve-racking than he had feared.

“It wasn’t an interview – it was an interrogation,” he says. “To me, an interrogation is just when you are interviewing a criminal, and someone who has committed a crime.”

The Home Office caseworker asked Isaac more than 300 questions over four hours, yet he recalls that he wasn’t offered any water: “My throat was dry. I was stressed. I’m not used to cold, and it was cold at the time. All of these things definitely had an impact on my interview.”

Isaac, who is in his early thirties and was a businessman in his home country, was subsequently refused asylum, and is now awaiting a decision on his appeal.

He is one of 30 survivors of torture whose asylum case files have been reviewed as part of new research into the experience of the asylum interview for torture survivors seeking asylum in the UK. The report, by charity Freedom from Torture, concludes that the Home Office repeatedly breaches its own guidelines during asylum interviews and “lets down many of those it is supposed to protect”.

More than half of immigration and asylum appeals are now successful, official figures show, with more than 23,000 people seeing their refusals overturned after appealing decisions in the 12 months to March last year, prompting concern about asylum decision making – and the quality of the interviews.

Transcripts of Isaac’s interview, seen by The Independent, show that he brought up his experience of torture a number of times, but that the caseworker didn’t follow up on these disclosures.

At one point, on being asked where he was taken after being arrested, Isaac said: “Everyone started beating and started asking questions and telling me I was the one who was inciting, propagating insurrection” – but the caseworker proceeded to ask only how many people were present.

Later on in the interview, Isaac stated that he “received torture and beating” while detained, and then goes on to explain that someone helped him clean the wound he obtained from this, but the caseworker at no point in the interview asked for further detail about his experience of torture.

Describing the line of questioning, Isaac says: “When I tried to tell them that I had been tortured, the interviewer didn’t ask me any other questions about it or try and find out about what had happened to me.

“You know, if someone doesn’t give you the room to speak and doesn’t try to make you feel comfortable when you’re discussing trauma, it becomes incredibly stressful. It makes it impossible to give the right information that they need.”

The findings of Freedom from Torture’s report, based on reviews of transcripts of asylum interviews carried out by the Home Office in 2017 or 2018 and a series of focus groups and interviews involving 25 torture survivors who had attended asylum interviews, shows they were often prevented from giving a full account of their experiences or denied the opportunity to explain their evidence.

The report states that some Home Office case workers were found to employ “poor questioning technique” and were “likely to default to disbelieving the survivor” during the interviews, with sensitivity and professional approach to claimants “not always maintained”.

One excerpt from a transcript included in the report reveals that a caseworker asked a claimant whether they were raped, to which the claimant responded: “Yes, beaten and raped and left naked, I don’t like to think about it,” and started to cry. The caseworker then immediately asked the asylum seeker: “How many times were you beaten and raped over the five days?”

In other cases, asylum seekers spoke of male interpreters being allocated when a female interpreter had been requested, or allocation of an interpreter who spoke the incorrect dialect or poor English, making it more difficult for them to explain their account fully to the caseworker.

One woman, Sara, told the researchers: “I requested for a female interpreter and female caseworker, but both were male ... Since I had [a] male interpreter, I couldn’t concentrate on the interview. I was just thinking of the interpreter ... I told [the caseworker], ‘I can’t share everything.’ They said, ‘Okay, that’s fine.’”

Ahmad, from the Middle East, meanwhile describes having to explain being tortured for freedom of expression in his home country through an interpreter who he said couldn’t speak a high standard of English.

“Imagine trying to explain that there had been a massacre, and your translator having to search for the appropriate word on Google,” he says. “I can speak some English, and when I heard the interpreter translating my words wrong, I would try to speak for myself, but the interviewer kept on telling me to answer in Arabic for the translator.

“I tried to explain that I needed to speak for myself as the interpreter was not saying what I was saying, but I was silenced. Worse yet, between the agonising misinterpretations – they didn’t even get to the bottom of my story.”

Ahmad was initially refused asylum, but was granted on appeal. He has now completed a master’s and plans to become a pharmacist.

He adds: “My application was denied because of the issues with my interpreter. When I saw what the Home Office thought my story was, it was completely wrong. The interpreter had mistranslated my story into a different version of the truth.”

Sonya Sceats, chief executive of Freedom from Torture, said the report’s findings shone a light on the Home Office’s “culture of disbelief” in the wake of the Windrush Lessons Learned Review – which attributed the Windrush scandal in part to a “culture of disbelief and carelessness” in the department – and called for fundamental culture changes in the system.

“It is yet another illustration of how a system corrupted by a culture of hostility and exclusion contributes to the misery and desperation of people in need of help. There have been glimmers of light and an acknowledgement of the need for change. But strong action is essential,” she said.

“In the context of a powerful movement for race equality and in the face of evidence showing the harmful impact on vulnerable people, the Home Office can no longer turn a blind eye to the injustice and hostility hardwired into the asylum system.”

While the research was carried about before the coronavirus pandemic hit the UK, the charity says is particularly important now for problems within the asylum system to be considered in order to inform the processes – be they face-to-face or remote – the Home Office puts in place during and post-Covid-19.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “We do not recognise these allegations. We have a proud history of supporting asylum seekers and our caseworkers follow the latest Home Office guidance and receive extensive training before they are permitted to conduct asylum interviews.

“All asylum seekers have access to legal advice and translation services if they require them. They are also given every opportunity to disclose information relevant to their claim before a decision is taken.”

*Names have been changed to protect identities