As per the information by the UK immigration, the UK Home Office will pay a compensation of £1 million along with an additional £1 million as costs after a petition involving 40 asylum-seeking children held unlawfully.
Biggest payout for unlawful detention by UK immigration— The payout amount is stated to be one of the biggest amounts handed out by the UK immigration for unlawful detention of each individual.
Majority of such asylum-seeking children were detained wrongly as adults at the Oakington detention center in Cambridgeshire.
The center was closed in the month of November 2010. The case of detention involved boys and girls aged between 14 to 16 years from nations like China, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Iran, Uganda, Somalia and Eritrea
Torturous living conditions for detained asylum-seeking children--No additional safeguards were provided to child detainees, the lawyers representing child-asylum seekers alleged. The UK Home Office officials taking the children into detention did not possess any specialist knowledge or experience required for working with children. Rather, they decided about the age of children by simply looking at them, the lawyers maintained
, the UK immigration officials conducted distressing interviews with children.
Representative lawyer of 40 children, Bhatt Murphy Solicitor Mark Scott said the children had not committed any crime, but even then, they were detained by the in unsuitable conditions by the UK immigration service.
Asylum-seeking child detainees were handed out £1,020,000 as compensation in addition to £1,085,000 as costs for the legal battle spanning five years. The settlement was made out of court in 2010 but the information came to light only recently under the Freedom of Information Act.
According to official spokesperson for Cambridge Migrant Solidarity, Jessica Wheeler, it is quite saddening to know that young children had to fight a battle to prove their age.
And it also throws light on the number of children having faced unlawful detention as well as deportation in the UK, she maintained.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the UKBA (UK Border Agency) stated that the welfare of young children is taken quite seriously by the agency. The policy had been changed after the case as the UK government accepted it as being unlawful.