The Home Office has cancelled a chartered deportation flight to Iraq that was due to depart from the UK on Tuesday evening.
Up to 30 Kurdish people who have been refused asylum were facing deportation to northern Iraq in the first flight of its kind for a decade.
Dozens of Kurdish Iraqis had been detained in preparation for the flight. Many the Guardian spoke to were in a state of acute distress because they fear for their lives if they are returned to the country of their birth.
The UK Foreign Office warns against all travel to Iraq and says there is “a high threat of kidnapping throughout the country including from both Daesh [Islamic State] and other terrorist and militia groups”.
Home Office contractors involved with Tuesday’s deportation had to undergo special training to help them deal with the risk of dangers such as kidnap or hostage situations. This training is not required for the destinations of other recent Home Office deportation flights, such as Jamaica and Albania.
The flight was scheduled to land in Erbil, northern Iraq, where the Kurdistan regional government is in control. It is understood that safety concerns played a part in the decision to cancel the flight. It is highly unusual for the Home Office to cancel charter flights. Some deportation flights have been known to take off with one or a few people on board.
A Home Office spokesperson said they could not comment “for operational reasons” but a separate Home Office source pointed out that some of those due to be on the deportation flight have criminal convictions.
Bella Sankey, the director of the charity Detention Action, said: “The cancellation of this cruel mass deportation will come as enormous relief to the fathers, mothers, children and grandchildren whose families would otherwise have been torn apart.
“It also exposes how, in her pursuit of cheap political points, Priti Patel has failed to respect people’s basic rights or even show basic competence in international diplomacy.”
A senior Iraqi Kurdish official said security staff had requested the case files of the passengers being returned, but neither the names of the passengers or their records in the UK had been provided. The official said information was due to have been passed through the central government in Baghdad, but that had not happened.
“Then the UK said they will provide details, but they weren’t enough,” the official said. “They need to be studied.”
The standoff comes amid widespread opposition within the Kurdish north to forced returns of would-be refugees from the UK. The domestic tone has hardened after a visit to London in April by the Kurdish prime minister, Masrour Barzan, which political opponents had claimed may be tied to the deportation flight. Barzani faces an election slated for later this year in which the issue of Kurds who have travelled abroad is likely to feature.
Karen Doyle from Movement for Justice, an organisation that has been campaigning against Tuesday’s charter flight, said: “The detainees and their families have been put through unnecessary torture in pursuit of headlines and a divisive anti-immigrant agenda.
“The Home Office likes to blame ‘lefty lawyers’ for frustrating their plans but these plans for mass deportations are expensive, unworkable, largely unlawful and horribly unjust.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “Foreign criminals should be in no doubt of our determination to deport them, and we make no apology for removing foreign offenders to keep the public safe.
“The Home Office regularly operates charter flights to different countries to remove those who have no right to be in the country. The new plan for immigration will fix the broken immigration system and expedite the removal of those with no right to be here.”
• This article was amended on 31 May 2022 to include reference to a Home Office source pointing out that some people due to be deported had criminal convictions. The headline and text were amended on 1 June 2022 to clarify that those being deported were refused asylum seekers.
