The UK government had to redirect flights to Arbil that carries failed asylum seekers to Baghdad after Kurdistan Federal Government protested forced deportations.
Home Office deportation flights are prevented from taking Kurdish refugees directly to South Kurdistan by the Kurdish authorities. The UK Border Agency redirected flights to Baghdad.
The first deported Kurdish refugee group will land Baghdad today.
The Home Office's forced repatriation of asylum seekers denied permission to remain in Britain has been diplomatically fraught.
Last year Iraqi officials sent most of the deported refugees back to UK, accepting only a few.
Home Office then contacted with the Iraqi interior ministry officials and permitted them interviewing and screening detained asylum seekers in UK detention centres to confirm they will accept each individual.
One Iraqi deported from the UK was killed by a car bomb in Kirkuk in 2007. The continuing violence claimed more than 60 lives following a series of co-ordinated blasts in Iraqi cities during just one day – 25 August – last week.
The Kurdish authorities in Iraq it has objected to forcible returns of failed asylum seekers from western European countries, threatening to withdraw diplomatic co-operation.
An official at the KRG representative office in London said to the Guardian newspaper: "The KRG has asked the British government to send only those people who want to go back. It is opposed to forcible deportations."
The last UK deportation flight to Kurdistan was about five months ago. The Home Office now accepts that it will have to send Kurdish Iraqis back via Baghdad unless the KRG agrees to reopen direct flights.
The border agency told the Guardian daily: "UKBA only ever returns those who both the agency and the courts are satisfied do not need our protection and refuse to leave voluntarily.
ANF NEWS DESK /
ANF NEWS AGENCY
