gardai ignore court order and deport nigerians anyway

chewy

High Court hearing deportation application

19 August 2004 14:47
The High Court has begun hearing an application to have six Nigerians who were deported to their homeland last April returned to Ireland.

An application to jail the Garda Commissioner, Noel Conroy, for alleged contempt of a court order in relation to the case has already been heard and is being considered by the court.

The application is being made by counsel for the six Nigerians, including a family of three, who were deported on a midnight flight on 7 April.



The court heard that earlier that night solicitors for the six had faxed the Garda National Immigration Bureau asking that they should not be deported.

Mr Justice Michael Peart heard that legal representatives of the six had gone before a High Court judge at his home at about 11pm on the night of 6 April with a legal challenge to the deportation.

Mr Justice Paul Gilligan had ordered that the deportation be restrained and directed that the six appear before the High Court the next morning.

The court was told that an hour later the six were put on a plane back to Nigeria against their will.

from rte....


hmm wonder if i coulds construct some sort of poll out of this

MadsL

chewy wrote:

hmm wonder if i coulds construct some sort of poll out of this

/me waits for arcadegame to start foaming at the mouth....

luckat

Ah, nothing like respect for the law. And this is nothing like respect for the law.

Zulu

Wooo wooo, that's the sound of de po-lece!
My mother was told that if she ever brought a gaurd home, she would be disowned.
My Grandmother truly was a great person.

Akula

Guys the space of an hour isn't a long time.... they claim the gardai destroyed the faxes... I'd love to hear the evidence. It could well have been that they didn't filter through on time.

Not saying they are definately innocent but I'd certainly say there may be more to this story than meets the eye, its not uncommon to allege anything in any sort of legal challenge.

Hobbes

Akula wrote:

Guys the space of an hour isn't a long time.... they claim the gardai destroyed the faxes... I'd love to hear the evidence. It could well have been that they didn't filter through on time.

Not saying they are definately innocent but I'd certainly say there may be more to this story than meets the eye, its not uncommon to allege anything in any sort of legal challenge.

I would be inclined to agree. Having dealt with NIB I've found them ok to deal with. They don't suffer fools gladly, but once you have the paperwork and the right process they are pretty decent.

magick

Akula

Guys the space of an hour isn't a long time.... they claim the gardai destroyed the faxes.

Actually their defence is "the dog ate it"

MadsL

Hobbes wrote:

I would be inclined to agree. Having dealt with NIB I've found them ok to deal with. They don't suffer fools gladly, but once you have the paperwork and the right process they are pretty decent.

Except that if you find yourself without permission to remain, then there is NO process in place for appeal. My (now) wife was refused further permission to remain after losing her job, and despite having a excellent job-offer from a global company and a work permit application in process, having shown evidence of more than ample funds and having private health insurance, also having told them we were getting married in six months. She was refused by a snotty twenty year old whose supervisor backed up the decision. I asked about the appeals proceedure and was dismissively told to 'write to the minister'...I asked again if there was a form or process to appeal and was told again to 'just write to the minister'. I asked about my wife's status and if she would now be deported, and was told 'we can deport her, do you want us to start deportation proceedings?' Then we were coyly told that she could leave the country and come back in as a tourist until we got married. We asked for a copy of the decision in writing and the reasons for it and again were told we would have to write to 'the department' - the supervisor refused to give us a written decision.

In the office upstairs my wifes application for a work permit was being processed*, yet the NIB knew nothing about it.

The NIB are NOT 'ok' they are a fecking disgrace. Arbitary decisions are made without a reasons being detailed, they seem to have no commmunication with the office issuing work permits and they have no apparent process in place for appeal. It does not suprise me tha due process of the law was not followed in this case. I hope they throw the book at them.


*successfully

Hobbes

MadsL wrote:

Except that if you find yourself without permission to remain, then there is NO process in place for appeal. My (now) wife was refused further permission to remain after losing her job,

Thought you were Irish?

also having told them we were getting married in six months. She was refused by a snotty twenty year old whose supervisor backed up the decision.

Well we had the same issue as well. She had to keep going back to her home country for a few weeks every 3 months. Once your married though its not a problem.

As I said they didn't suffer fools gladly. I also got stropiness from the first person the second person onwards, once we had all the paperwork and came prepared they were very decent about it.

Also if you get stroppy back they tend to be pig headed about helping you. Treat them like talking to a gardai or customs official.. don't get confrontational.

dathi1

Emigration leaves behind the old and the old fashioned and that is what we are stuck with. Old fashioned tiny minded people running the country to their own petty right-wing agenda.

Go to America....have a yap with the American Irish...the most right wing of the right wing on the planet...a country where they have terminated all work permits with Nigeria because of their sizeable fraud culture export. so...emigration leaves behind the old and the old fashioned???

chewy

"Guys the space of an hour isn't a long time.... they claim the gardai destroyed the faxes... I'd love to hear the evidence. It could well have been that they didn't filter through on time.

Not saying they are definately innocent but I'd certainly say there may be more to this story than meets the eye, its not uncommon to allege anything in any sort of legal challenge."

your right about the exagerration akula, just like the torture cases trying to subpoena rumsfeld gets headlines but it doesn't mean they didn't do it,

its standard practice for them to take the mobile phones off them and not let them contact anyone...

MadsL

Hobbes wrote:

Well we had the same issue as well. She had to keep going back to her home country for a few weeks every 3 months. Once your married though its not a problem.

The point is that my wife was a foreign professional contributing heavily to the tax coffers of the country (having been invited to the country after a FAS recruitment drive in Prague) who got downsized and then found a new job. The GNIB gave her no due process to follow under the law once they had decided that they would refuse her permission to remain.

She should NOT have to get married to stay here, nor dodge around tourist visas. She should also have clear access to an appeals process if an adverse decision is reached.

The GNIB should not be and are not a law unto themselves - this case and many that I have heard would seem to suggest that they feel that they are above the law.

MadsL

dathi1 wrote:

Go to America....have a yap with the American Irish...the most right wing of the right wing on the planet...a country where they have terminated all work permits with Nigeria because of their sizeable fraud culture export. so...emigration leaves behind the old and the old fashioned???

Can you explain to me why it is then that the US Embassy in Nigeria continues to process US immigrant visas...
http://abuja.usembassy.gov/wwwhcoim.html

Perhaps you might have a link for this little nugget of Nigeria-bashing!

ChipZilla

fordprefect wrote:

Seems they run the department of Just-us. Our crazy immigration laws are wide open to abuse by the GNIB. I wonder if anyone else here has actually had to deal with the neanderthals in that office. I have sat and watched them "work".

It is a shameful disgrace and I am ashamed to be associated with a country that treats people in such an underhand and unjust way.

Ah, don't worry. Ireland's not alone. Sweden's deported[ people without taking any notice of their rights either:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11976-2004Jul24.html

I think it's a subscription site, so here's the text:

STOCKHOLM -- The airport police officer was about to close his small precinct station for the night, when two men wearing suits walked in. The visitors said the special Swedish security police had just arrested two suspected terrorists -- very dangerous men -- and needed a place to hold them until a plane could take them away.

The airport policeman recounted in an interview that he agreed to let them borrow his cramped office that night, Dec. 18, 2001, and stepped out of the way. But there was something strange about this operation. The two men in suits, who were soon joined by two uniformed Swedish police officers, did not speak Swedish, he said, and their English sounded distinctly American.

Another oddity: When the suspects arrived a few minutes later, they were escorted by a half-dozen security agents wearing hoods.

The hooded agents took the suspected terrorists into the precinct's dressing room. Inside, the agents cut off the prisoners' clothes with scissors, changed the men into red overalls and bound them with handcuffs and leg irons. Then they were hustled out the door and onto the tarmac, where a U.S.-registered Gulfstream V jet was waiting.

The men with covered faces "were very quiet," recalled Paul Forell, the police officer on duty at Stockholm's Bromma Airport that night. "When they gave orders to each other, they kept their voices down. It seemed like they had done this before. They were very professional." Forell said he could not hear them well enough to get a feel for their nationality.

The plane's destination was Cairo. Its two unwilling passengers were Egyptian nationals who had applied for asylum in Sweden more than a year earlier, hoping to take advantage of its extensive programs for refugees facing political arrest or persecution in their home countries. After welcoming the men at first, the Swedish government reversed its position after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

The deportation was carried out swiftly and outside Sweden's normal legal channels. Officials gave final approval to the expulsion order at 4 p.m. on Dec. 18, according to accounts issued later by the government. The men had been grabbed on the street without warning by 5 p.m. and were in the air by 9:47 p.m. Their lawyers were not officially notified of the expulsion until after the plane had departed, to prevent them from filing appeals.

Playing a central and secret role in the operation: the U.S. government, which provided the plane, some agents and other logistical support, according to classified documents recently released by the Swedish government, as well as interviews in Stockholm and Cairo.

The CIA refers to such cases as "extraordinary renditions," the fast and forcible transfer of foreign terrorism suspects to other countries, often their places of origin, where they can be detained or interrogated more freely, often without all the legal protections available in the country they left.

Details of such operations are almost always secret, and the United States has not acknowledged its role in the deportation of the two Egyptian men. But CIA officials have testified in Congress about engaging in about 70 renditions before 2001. Security analysts said the number has increased substantially since then, as the U.S. government has become more aggressive in its global hunt for people considered a threat to national security.

Critics have charged that the practice is vulnerable to abuse, noting that suspects are usually deported to countries that are friendly to U.S. intelligence agencies but also have records of permitting torture or other human rights violations. In organizing such transfers, the U.S. government is engaging in practices abroad that would be illegal and unconstitutional at home, those critics have said.

The fate of the two Egyptian men offers a rare glimpse into such a case, as well as an example of what can go wrong.

The Swedish government, for instance, agreed to deport the suspects only after receiving assurances from Egypt that they would be given fair trials and "not be subjected to inhuman treatment or punishment of any kind," according to a confidential memo prepared by Swedish diplomats six days before the expulsion.

Records and interviews show, however, that the agreement was broken almost as soon as the two men arrived in Cairo. Their lawyers, relatives and human rights groups said there is credible evidence that they were regularly subjected to electric shocks and other forms of torture. One suspect was sentenced to 25 years in prison by a military tribunal after a trial that lasted less than six hours. The other spent almost two years behind bars without being charged.

ionapaul

fordprefect wrote:

Geldof was right. We are a banana republic. Emigration leaves behind the old and the old fashioned and that is what we are stuck with. Old fashioned tiny minded people running the country to their own petty right-wing agenda.

I would have thought that the emigration waves of the 80s and 90s, encouraged by failed high-taxation, state-controlled economy policies, drove most people on the right (economically) out of Ireland, and left behind a sizable 'left-wing' population! You can't tell me the dynamic, hard-working, risk-taking and highly-educated youth who fled these shores only a few years ago were the lefties! At the time the only ones who seemed interested in staying were those who wanted a 'job for life' from the government (34 hour week?) or those who got into a job where the union could strike, strike, strike for more and more, even if the company was losing money! The capitalists got the hell outta dodge in the 80s

luckat

Was it for this the Wild Geese spread the grey wing on every tide? Ford, if you don't like Ireland as it is now, perhaps you should try to make your country better? How are you going to do that? Interested to hear your ideas.

bobbyjoe

ionapaul: You can't tell me the dynamic, hard-working, risk-taking and highly-educated youth who fled these shores only a few years ago were the lefties!

Maybe not, but people who have travelled and/or lived abroad are generally much more sympathetic to foreigners in their country as they know what its like to leave your family, friends and home.
Unlike a lot of people who haven't done much traveling (by this I don't mean a week in Santa Ponza) who think that its easy to uproot go to another country/culture and o yeah have a baby so you can live there.
Though they never tried it themselves

edit took out a smilie

chewy

it seems today in the paper its reported the lawyer said that claiming that the fax of the court order was riped up by the gardai was "too harsh" which underimines the whole case:/

MadsL

The point remains that the nigerians cannot return with the deportation orders in effect, but yet cannot appeal them without being in the country.

Orwellian?