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Cameroon Woman Refused Asylum, Deported by Brits, Brutalized & Returned to UK

Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
sent by Lynette Dumble - activ-l

The Independent - Oct 5, 2007
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article3028716.ece


Beaten, bleeding - and then returned in a wheelchair

By Robert Verkaik

They came for Beatrice in the middle of the night, an immigration
officer, three security guards and a male doctor.

 From Yarl's Wood detention centre, in Clapham, Bedfordshire, they led
the 29-year-old failed asylum-seeker into a waiting car, drove her to
Southampton airport and hurried on to the plane.

She sat quietly in the end row in handcuffs and leg bindings. But when
she complained that she was not feeling well she claims was told by
one of the escorts: "If you do not go quietly we will beat you."
Another is alleged to have said: "I'm very sorry but I have to do it,
if we don't bring you to Cameroon they won't pay us."

She started to protest. "They are forcing me," she shouted to the
other passengers. The doctor and the female security guard forced her
head down into her knees, and covered her head with a jacket. Another
escort clamped his hand over her mouth and kicked her legs.

As they moved into the airport at Paris, where she was to transfer to
another flight, she saw two French policemen, panicked, and tried to
run, but was tripped by an escort and fell. A French policeman knelt
on her lower back, and a British escort on her shoulders. She
struggled and was "kneed" in the groin so hard blood that poured from
between her legs. On the flight to Cameroon, she suffered five panic
attacks. By now her condition had attracted the attention of the other
passengers, one of whom was a British policeman visiting Cameroon.
When the plane touched down the policeman and two other passengers
reported Beatrice to Cameroon immigration.

Witnesses claim the airport manager was visibly shocked when she saw
Beatrice slumped between the shoulders of two of the escort team. The
manager asked them to let Beatrice walk alone without support but
Beatrice immediately collapsed on the floor.

She was told by a Cameroon immigration officer: "Normally you would go
to the Cameroon prison. But if you died in prison, they would blame it
on the Cameroon authorities. If you come back without psychiatric
medication, and without injury, we can send you to the prison. Also
you have no one to pay for treatment in Cameroon."

At this point the escort team is alleged to have offered to pay $300
to the immigration authorities, but this was refused. At 11pm on 28
August Beatrice was put in a wheelchair and flown back to Britain.

When Beatrice arrived at Heathrow she was immediately taken by
ambulance to Hillingdon Hospital, where she was treated for severe
genital bleeding and multiple bruising over her body. A psychiatrist
said she was "traumatised by events". Beatrice remains at Yarl's Wood
waiting for the Government to begin her removal process again.

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