Asylum seekers continue food refusal

The striking asylum seekers claim they were deceived

Asylum seekers being held in Cardiff Prison have entered their seventh day of food refusal, in a protest over being held in jail.

There had been indications on Monday that the 29 remaining protesters may abandon their protest and begin eating food again.

On Tuesday, the prison governor personally appealed to the detainees to give up their protest, but they refused.

The Refugee Council has repeated its calls for an urgent review of the Home Office's policy of detaining asylum seekers awaiting a hearing or due for deportation.

The jail in Cardiff's city centre

Three of the Cardiff protesters gave up their actions at the weekend.

The Prison Service began a series of health and psychology checks on Saturday, as the protest passed the 72-hour point.

But prison officials said the checks raised no concerns over the detainees.

They have also denied that the asylum seekers are on hunger strike and claim that they are on "food refusal".

The decision to detain the asylum seekers in jail has been widely criticised by charity organisations and aid groups.

'Horrendous crimes'

BBC Wales reported that some of the detainees had been offered drugs and told how to forge credit cards.

Solicitor Hillary Brown who represents five of the asylum seekers at the prison said some of the detainees had been subjected in their own countries to "horrendous crimes"

One of the people that Ms Brown represents is a former prison warden from the Ukraine, who claims he was sent death threats after he refused to pay protection money to a gang.

Ms Brown visited the man last week to discuss the situation in Cardiff jail.

The men began the action on 7 August, after claiming they had not been told they would be detained in a prison.

Desperate measure

The men have been kept at the prison for around four months under a Home Office policy announced earlier this year to hold them while specialist detention centres are built.

They claimed they were deceived by immigration officials and say they were told they would be sent to Cardiff, but not the city's jail.

The Refugee Council has said the hunger strike was a "desperate measure".

The Home Office has said that the policy of housing asylum seekers in prison is a temporary measure and the government had pledged that no immigrants would be in prisons after Christmas.