An asylum seeker has been given £100,000 after she complained that she had been “treated like a criminal” after she overstayed in the UK.
Nadra Almas, from Pakistan, fought a 16-year legal battle against the Home Office to remain in the UK.
Almas, who initially came to the UK on a student visa in 2004, argued that she could not return home due to religious reasons.
She said that her Christian faith would make a likely victim of religious persecution in her home country.
Nadra Almas, from Pakistan, fought a 16-year legal battle against the Home Office to remain in the UK
GettyAlmas, whose visa expired five months after she came to the country, was served a notice of removal in 2008.
The High Court in Birmingham heard that between 2005 and 2014, she made six applications to stay in the UK.
In 2018, her then 26-year-old son successfully applied for asylum on the same grounds that she appealed on.
That same year, she was detained by Home Office officials who informed her that she would be deported. However, two weeks later, she was released from Yarl's Wood immigration removal centre.
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Almas was held for two weeks at Yarl's Wood immigration removal centre
PA
For three years while she waited for the Government to grant her refugee status, she could not work or travel. She also could not claim any benefits.
During this time she had to rely on friends and family to get by, an experience that “undermined her self-esteem and caused her embarrassment”.
This was a breach of her rights to a family life under the human Rights Act, the original judge, Recorder McNeill, ruled.
“She could not travel, she could not move freely, she could not develop her private and family life because her status was uncertain, and she could not work or claim public funds and had to rely on the little support from the asylum system,” the judge said.
“She was wholly unable to work and her home life was affected by the anxiety she felt following her period of detention, feeling like a criminal and not a good person with her friends and family because she had been detained.”
The High Court in Birmingham heard that between 2005 and 2014, she made six applications to stay in the UK
Wikimedia CommonsThe court was also told that during her two-week detention, Almas was “handcuffed and detained, imprisoned in a room with two men she did not know and told she was going to be flown back to Pakistan”.
McNeill described her treatment during the detention as “outrageous” and that officials showed “a reckless disregard for her rights”.
She said: “The rights at stake were the most basic rights of liberty of the individual. [Ms Almas] feared to return to Pakistan for reasons of her religion and personal safety, which she clearly expressed to [the Home office] on being detained, and was, indeed, in due course granted refugee status, thus vindicating the genuineness of her fears.”
She was awarded £98,757.04 in damages after claiming the conditions breached her human rights.
The Government tried to appeal the decision of the original judge on the case, but this was later dismissed by Justice Ritchie who said that the “breaches were not trivial or minor”.
He also said that the payout given was appropriate.
