Darfur escapee fears deportation

Dilli's wife and child were killed in Darfur

A man who fled Darfur to escape the violence which killed his wife and baby son could be sent back to Sudan.

"Dilli" was sent to live in Nottingham after people smugglers helped him escape - and fears harsh treatment if he returns to his country.

His fate is to be decided this week in the House of Lords.

But the Notts-based Aegis Trust, which helps genocide victims, says the treatment of Darfuri asylum seekers is reminiscent of the Holocaust.

Dilli was shot in the arm and hit on the head with the blunt end of an axe during the violence in Darfur but managed to escape alive - unlike his wife and one-year-old son.

He said: "Someone shot my wife and then my son... he heard his mother crying, he just came in and they shot him as well."

'Genocide' claim

Dilli is one of many Darfuris seeking asylum in Britain.

The number of people killed there has been estimated at more than 200,000 and the Sudanese government has been accused of supporting militias who have destroyed countless villages in an action described as "genocide" by the US government.

The Appeal Court ruled that people from Darfur cannot be deported, but the Home Office said it was safe to send them to other parts of Sudan and will challenge the deportation ban in the House of Lords on Thursday.

But the Aegis Trust has likened this action to sending Jews back to Nazi Germany.

Dr James Smith from the charity said: "When people like Dilli get sent back to Sudan they will be picked up at the airport in Khartoum and tortured - we have evidence of this.

"And it has echoes of the past, of what happened in Europe when the Jews were being targeted and if we're going to say 'Never again should people be targeted for genocide', then we have to mean that."

The Home Office pointed out that the deportation ban had nothing to do with safety fears and was imposed because the courts were worried about people's living conditions in Khartoum.

In a statement it said: "The Court did not find that non-Arab Darfuris would be at risk of mistreatment in Khartoum.

"Instead it found that they would be ill-equipped for city living, and that conditions could be worse for them than those in Darfur."