Home Office accused of ‘cruelty’ after Jamaicans driven to charter flight despite courts blocking their removal

Campaigners have accused the Home Office of inhumane treatment of Jamaicans granted a last-minute reprieve from deportation, as details of a controversial charter flight emerged.

At least 25 people set to be flown to Kingston on Tuesday morning had their removal halted by judges hours earlier because they had been denied access to legal help.

The Independent understands that around 20 of these men were told they would not be on the flight, only to be driven from their detention centres near Heathrow to Yorkshire in the middle of the night – with no details about where they were going.

In one case, a disabled man said he was left suffering “excruciating pain” after being forced to sit on a coach for 11 hours while he was driven to Doncaster airport despite having been told his removal was not going ahead.

Campaigners said that the treatment, in the wake of the Windrush scandal, was “callous and cruel”.

The disabled man, 56, who didn’t want to be named, said he was taken from his disability cell in Harmondsworth removal centre at around 9pm on Monday and had to wait for around three hours before the vehicle left.

“I had been feeling a lot of pain in my back and legs even before, and then it intensified. [The officers] gave me two pillows because that’s all they could find,” he said

“I was in so much pain. I kept complaining and telling them this was inhumane. I was really distraught, seriously distressed.”

He said the vehicle arrived at Doncaster airport at around 3am and remained there for around four hours, before they were told they were not being removed. They were then driven to another detention centre, Morton Hall, where they arrived shortly after 8am.

“Even when they had told us our removals had been cancelled we were still there for two hours because they were changing shifts. I didn’t know what was happening,” he said.

“We waited another two hours in the coach at Morton Hall. When I finally got out the guards had to hold me up because I couldn’t walk. I’ve never had anything like that in my life.”

The flight still went ahead with 17 men on board, who were due to arrive in Kingston on Tuesday night UK time.

It follows a week of controversy as ministers claimed the men set to be removed had committed “serious crimes”, though some had been in jail for less than a year. Many arrived in Britain as children and have no other links to Jamaica.

Monday night’s successful legal challenge was made over detainees’ lack of access to working sim cards following a mobile phone outage, which meant they could not speak to lawyers. The Home Office had admitted breaching its own policy of giving five working days before removal to seek legal advice.

The department attempted to get the ruling overturned in the hours before the flight but its application for reconsideration was rejected by the Court of Appeal shortly before 1am on Tuesday.

Bella Sankey, director of Detention Action, which launched the legal challenge, said she was receiving calls from detainees at around 2am saying they were being driven to an airport despite the ruling – which she said was “inhumane”.

“There was a huge amount of confusion. People were really scared and worried. People’s loved ones were getting really mixed communication during that period,” she said.

“To force detainees to go through several hours of agony in direct contradiction with what one of the most senior courts had decided is really poor form.”

Dunya Kamal, a caseowrker at Duncan Lewis Solicitors, which represents a number of the detainees affected, said: “This is yet another example of the callous and cruel way in which they have approached this charter flight.”

Those who avoided removal are currently being held in removal centres but are now able to launch applications for release on bail. The government said it would be “urgently appealing” against the court decision.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “Today 17 serious foreign criminals were deported from the UK. They were convicted of rape, violent crimes and drug offences and had a combined sentence length of 75 years, as well as a life sentence. We make no apology whatsoever for seeking to remove dangerous foreign criminals."