Government Criticized for Detaining Deportees in Prisons - Human Rights Concerns

PRISON CAMPAIGNERS HAVE said the governments practice of detaining people for weeks before they are deported flies in the face of international human rights standards.

Increasing numbers of asylum seekers are held in prisons as the government ramps up the number of deportations, partly to prevent them absconding before the flight, and also to pressure their family members into boarding the flight out of Ireland with them.

But the Irish Penal Reform Trust has criticised this move, saying that it believes the measure is wrong because it sees people jailed for administrative reasons, not because they were a suspect or had been convicted of a crime.

Social Democrats justice spokesperson Gary Gannon called the practice incredibly cruel and said it was being done for the wrong reason.

In law, an person seeking international protection is viewed as committing a criminal offence and can be arrested without warrant if they come into contact with An Garda S�och�na if they have not complied with a deportation order.

The IPRTs executive director Saoirse Brady said that the stance of the Council of Europes Committee for the Prevention of Torture was that detention for immigration purposes should be exceptional, proportionate and decided on a case-by-case basis to deem if its absolutely necessary.

Prison should always be a sanction of last resort, Brady said. Yet weve recently seen people detained in prison prior to deportation for administrative reasons, not because they were a suspect or had been convicted of a crime.

For this reason, IPRT is concerned that recent developments fly in the face of international human rights standards.

A number of the deportees have previously outlined to The Journal how they were held in Cloverhill Prison for three and four weeks and some for longer. Some had to sleep on the floor due to overcrowding.

The total number of men imprisoned for the Nigeria flight reached into double figures, with similar numbers recorded for two previous government flights to Georgia.

Some of the men from the Nigeria flight said they were repeatedly offered drugs in prison but refused. One man, who chaired a community group in Clondalkin in Dublin, alleged he was beaten by a fellow prisoner during his stay there.

Human rights observers

Brady said that the organisation also firmly holds that human rights observers need to be mandatory on the flights. She said Ireland needs to drop its status as an outlier and ratify the EU legislation covering the use of deportation flights.

The comments come on the back of a government charter flight that deported some 35 people to Nigeria last month, which was criticised after it emerged that no independent human rights observer was on board the flight.

These independent observers had been on board the governments first two charter flights.

An independent observer had been present at Dublin Airport before the flight took off and later received a debrief from garda� who were on board the plane, according to Justice Minister Jim OCallaghan.

OCallaghan admitted that due to technical reasons outside the control of the Department of Justice, the human rights observer was not able to accompany the flight to Lagos.

Brady said the Irish government needs to introduce key safeguards to ensure the rights of prisoners through ratification of the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention against Torture (OPCAT).

Despite signing up to the international human rights treaty in 2007, Ireland remains the only EU member state yet to ratify the anti-torture protocol. However, it is included in the current Programme for Government.

Brady said Ireland cannot afford to fail to ratify the protocol any longer, particularly given the ever-increasing deterioration of prison conditions due to the overcrowding crisis and due to people being imprisoned for administrative rather than criminal matters.

Gary Gannon TD said the intervention from the Irish Penal Reform Trust was important and criticised the government for what he called a performative measure in its bid to appear tougher on immigration.

The Dublin Central TD said that the jailing of people for weeks before their deportation was having real life impacts upon people and needed to be stopped.

Its a strategy thats designed with an intent in mind that they believe will somehow deter people from coming in here seeking international protection, that well somehow show that were not soft anymore and this is a belief that Jim OCallaghan seems to hold, and hes been backed up across his own government, Gannon said.

Its the wrong approach and I think its incredibly cruel. Its having impacts both on the wrong people being in prison for the wrong reason and then theres a scenario where people who have already caused damage to communities are being allowed out of prison, Gannon said, referencing the recent release of convicted criminals due to the prison overcrowding crisis.

Thats a choice the minister is making and I think its the wrong one, Gannon said.

When contacted, the Department of Justice said the preferred option is to return people voluntarily, which it added can only be availed of before a deportation order is issued. It further defended the practice as an example of enforcing the law.

On the issue of a human rights observer on board charter deportation flight, the department said it is not a requirement but added that it is a practice that the Department of Justice, Home Affairs & Migration implements as part of the planning stages of a deportation flight.

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