Bangladeshi man’s asylum application ‘could take months’ to judge

Tuesday 22 August 2017

Decisions over whether to grant the asylum claim of a Bangladeshi man who was detained in a restaurant last week could take months, Express has learned.

The 27-year-old man, who had travelled to the island earlier in the year from the UK, was detained after Customs and Immigration officials executed a search warrant on the St Helier premises.

Following his arrest, he later claimed asylum. The man has since been taken to La Moye Prison, which is being treated as an interim holding facility for the while investigations into his application continue.

Deciding whether to grant him leave to remain, however, is likely to take a matter of months to resolve, rather than weeks. 

Responsibility for asylum requests was passed from the Lieutenant Governor to the Home Affairs Department earlier this year.

Pictured: The 27-year-old man was from Bangladesh, a country to the east of India.

They will now work alongside experts from the UK Home Office with relevant cultural knowledge to help determine the validity of the man's claim.

Reasons for granting asylum can vary from the applicant being in immediate physical danger to political oppression and threat of persecution.

According to Jersey’s Immigration Rules, people entering the island may be granted refugee status if there are, “…no reasonable grounds for regarding the applicant as a danger to security,” and if refusing would force the applicant to return to, “…a country in which his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership of a particular social group.”

The States say that they will not comment further on the matter. 

Last year, Mr Amir Merikhi, a disabled Iranian national, claimed asylum after he was smuggled in the boot of a car on a ferry to Jersey in the first case of its kind to be heard on the island for at least a decade.

Pictured: Amir Merikhi claimed asylum from Iran last year after arriving on the island in a car boot.

He narrowly escaped a prison sentence for immigration offences and was handed a suspended sentence of 12 months.

The case led former Bailiff and Royal Court Commissioner Sir Michael Birt to warn that Jersey could be used as a gateway to the UK, causing widespread public debate over what Jersey’s role should be in the midst of the refugee crisis.