International   

Blair shifts policy on foreign detenus

Hasan Suroor

LONDON: In what is regarded as a significant policy shift, British Prime Minister Tony Blair has said that foreign prisoners in Britain should be automatically deported back to their countries irrespective of whether it is safe for them to return.

Currently, Britain does not send back foreign nationals to countries where they could face torture or persecution. Only last week, the High Court ruled that a group of Afghan nationals, who hijacked an Ariana airlines plane to Britain six years ago to escape the erstwhile Taliban regime, should be allowed to stay on here until it was considered safe for them to go back to Afghanistan.

Faced with criticism that his Government had been too lax in keeping a tab on illegal immigrants and that many foreign prisoners, who should have been deported, had been allowed to melt in the crowd, Mr. Blair said that there should be a "presumption of automatic deportation'' in the "vast bulk'' of foreign prisoners.

"Those people, in my view, should be deported irrespective of any claim that they have that the country to which they are going back may not be safe,'' he told MPs.

Human rights groups seized on Mr. Blair's remarks in the House of Commons to accuse him of pandering to anti-immigrant "hysteria'' following reports that a number of foreign nationals, who were not deported after being released from jail, had re-offended. As criticism mounted and Mr. Blair faced accusations of "undermining'' human rights laws, the Immigration Minister Tony McNulty sought to deny a shift in policy saying that there would still be situations where it may not be possible to deport people because of the conditions in a particular country.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Musharraf hints at securing second term as President
Blair shifts policy on foreign detenus
Scientists discover antibiotic that can fight superbugs
Qarase sworn in Fiji Prime Minister
Nepal Army worried
China, Pakistan agree on trade pact
105 die in violence across Afghanistan
Hamas deploys militia
Independence referendum
Cook's ship found?
India to join U.S.-backed gas pipeline project
Feroze Khan put on Pakistan "black list"

Copyright © 2006, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu