Home Office admits errors after arrest of Nepali guards airlifted from Kabul

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The Home Office has admitted it made errors in the handling of the cases of some Nepali guards who risked their lives to protect British embassy staff in Afghanistan and were airlifted to safety in the UK after the Taliban took control of Kabul.

Ten of the guards who were living and working in the UK were arrested on 27 March in an immigration enforcement operation, handcuffed and placed in immigration detention centres. Some were given removal directions. Officials have released six of the guards, and the remaining four are likely to be released imminently.

Home Office officials say their error was to grant some of the guards indefinite leave to remain in the UK. They confirmed that those granted leave would not now have it taken away from them.

A group of about 200 Nepali and a smaller number of Indian guards who protected key institutions in Kabul were airlifted to safety from Kabul by the RAF during the chaotic evacuation from the Afghan capital by western countries in August 2021 and brought to the UK. However, although the work they did to protect British personnel in Afghanistan was broadly similar their treatment by Home Office officials varied considerably.

More than a 100 of the guards were secretly removed to Nepal and India against their will days after being airlifted to safety in the UK. While another group were granted indefinite leave to remain, a third group were granted temporary permission to stay.

Home Office officials declined to answer questions about why a group of guards doing broadly similar work in Afghanistan received such different treatment, whether there was any policy governing their evacuation and whether any investigation has been launched into the errors made.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “A small number of non-Afghan nationals who were not deemed eligible for consideration under our Afghan visa routes were evacuated from Afghanistan as a gesture of goodwill and subsequently granted indefinite leave to remain in error. While this does not change the scope of the [Afghan resettlement] schemes, we have allowed the individuals affected to keep their immigration status and will not be taking any further action.”

Bam Bahadur Gurung, one of the 10 guards detained, was told he was being released from immigration detention on 5 April, but instead was taken to another detention centre and was finally released on Tuesday on immigration bail. The bail notice he received had a box ticked stating: “You are liable to be detained because there is reasonable suspicion that you may be liable to removal from the UK.”

Speaking from a hotel to which he had been bailed, Gurung said: “I’m very happy to have been released after seven weeks in detention but I do not know what will happen to me now. I tried to stay strong while I was in detention by doing yoga and going to the gym. I felt mentally traumatised in detention and was getting flashbacks about what happened in Afghanistan – the violence and the bombs there.”

Jamie Bell of the law firm Duncan Lewis solicitors, which is representing Gurung and some of the other guards, said: “As a result of a catastrophic mistake, these men were handcuffed and detained by the Home Office for over a month. It is deeply concerning that the Home Office do not seem to know how their own humanitarian situation works and that individuals like these ten men are suffering because of it.”

The Home Office spokesperson said: “We remain committed to providing protection for vulnerable and at-risk people fleeing Afghanistan and, so far, we have brought around 24,500 people to safety in the UK.”