A ruling from the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Strasbourg, has led to cancellation of the inaugural flight scheduled to convey asylum seekers from the UK to Rwanda on Tuesday.
BBC reports that as many as seven persons were to be transported to the east African country but the flight was stopped after a late intervention from the ECtHR led to fresh challenges in the UK courts.
The report quotes Home Secretary, Priti Patel as saying she was “disappointed” but added: “Preparation for the next flight begins now.”
However, James Wilson from campaign group Detention Action said the rare intervention from the ECtHR “shows how potentially dangerous” the Rwanda evacuations are.
According to Wilson, the court had recognised that no one should be forced on to a plane until the policy was fully scrutinised in a High Court hearing next month.
The cancellation of the flight follows days of arguments in UK courts, ending with the home secretary getting the go-ahead to begin transporting some of the asylum seekers.
A Boeing 767, chartered at an estimated cost of £500,000, was scheduled to take off at 22:30 BST from a military airport in Wiltshire but the ruling halting the deportation of one of the seven men came just about three hours before the departure time and triggered a series of legal challenges in London courts.
According to the report, by 22:15 all the passengers had been removed from the plane, which then returned to Spain.
The Strasbourg human rights court – part of the Council of Europe, which still considers the UK as a member, said an Iraqi man known as KN faced “a real risk of irreversible harm” if he remained on the flight.
However, the High Court in London earlier ruled that KN could be returned to the UK if his bid to overturn the Rwanda transportation policy succeeded, the ECtHR said there was no legally enforceable mechanism to ensure he could come back from east Africa.
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