UK: "Snatch squad" storms mosque
01 May 2002
The principle of the sanctity of a place of worship was violated on 25 July when five immigration officers and 12 policemen smashed their way into a mosque in Lye, West Midlands, dressed in riot gear and armed with a battering ram. The action was carried out by an immigration "snatch squad", twelve of which are supposed to enforce the government's annual deportation target of 30,000 from the end of this year onwards. A strong community based anti-deportation campaign and a legal challenge has forced the government to postpone the family's deportation, and Muslim community leaders have voiced outrage at the "military-style" raid.
Farid and Feriba Ahmadi and their two children aged 4 and 6 had fled Afghanistan and were given sanctuary in their local mosque and have received strong community support after having received a deportation order. The British government applied the Dublin Convention in their case, after having found out through the European-wide asylum seekers finger-printing database Eurodac, that the family had applied for asylum in Germany. In Germany however, the family spent 10 months in immigration detention centres before finding out their application was refused. Germany argues it is "discouraging" asylum seekers from coming to Germany by imprisoning them in isolated detention centres with no means to travel or communicate, rendering them prone to racist attacks (two people died in attacks on centralised refugee housing last year alone).
After having come to Britain in June 2001, Farid and Feriba started studying at a local college and the children attended the local primary school, the governor of which has now become the secretary of their defence campaign. The governor Soraya Wilson said:
They came to England so that they could have freedom and a life and so the children could be brought up in freedom. People forget that in this country.
Farid was tortured by the Taliban and Feriba was forbidden to study and both made their way via Pakistan, the Ukraine and Germany to the UK.
Muslim leaders said that the police raid was "inhumane and insensitive", pointing out that although the family had been in the mosque for four weeks, neither the police nor the immigration authorities had contacted the mosque. Questions were asked as to whether the authorities would have acted in the same way if sanctuary had been given by a Christian church. In reply to allegations that the raid had insulted the Muslim faith, a police spokesman contested that officers had worn plastic bags as shoe coverings and the female officers had covered their hair whilst they forced their way into the mosque.
National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns Newsletter Issue 27 (July-September) 2002; The Times 26.7.02; The Guardian 26.7.02. The Ahmand Family campaign can be contacted at: paulrowlands@thenec.freeserve.co.uk, or via Soraya Wilson on 0044 (0)1384 423552.