Aziz’s family was sitting down for an evening meal in their cramped Islamabad hotel room when there was a knock at the door. When his nine-year-old daughter opened it, she was faced with a group of uniformed Pakistani police officers, clad in helmets and carrying rifles.
Outside the hotel window, police vehicles lined the street. Around 50 officers were going door-to-door in the hotel, searching for people whose visas had expired or who were unable to prove they were due to leave the country soon.
Aziz knew what this meant. A former Afghan commando who had fought “shoulder-to-shoulder” with UK forces, he and his family had been granted approval to start a new life in Britain, safe from the Taliban. Months later, they were still holed up in an interim hotel in Pakistan, waiting to be relocated – and the threat of deportation was growing.
Within 48 hours, most of his family members, including a four-year-old and a newborn baby, had been rounded up with just the clothes on their backs, and sent back to their native Afghanistan – the very country they had been rescued from by the British troops less than a year earlier.
The Independent and Lighthouse Reports have now pieced together how this family, whose lives were deemed to be at risk in Afghanistan, were deported despite being under the care of the British government. Through interviews with the family, correspondence they shared, and documentation, we have uncovered that this deportation took place with the UK authorities being aware of what was happening.
Ministers have been accused of “all but abandoning” Aziz and his family, who had been approved for relocation under Arap, the Ministry of Defence (MoD)’s flagship resettlement scheme for those who supported UK forces.
The family are now in hiding in Afghanistan, in fear for their lives. Through voice notes shared with one of his sons, Aziz said: “I am facing a very certain death if I am not evacuated from Afghanistan. My whole focus is on securing my family so they can avoid getting killed by the Taliban.”
But it appears the UK government is not even trying to rescue the family. Aziz was informed that the British High Commission wants to return their passports and luggage that was left in the hotel room to them in Afghanistan.
The shocking story raises questions about the time it is taking the British government to bring Afghans eligible for relocation to the UK. Concerns about the safety of those waiting for sanctuary intensified this year after it emerged – only after the lifting of an unprecedented super injunction – that a major data breach by the MoD led to the personal data of 18,700 applicants to the UK’s Afghan resettlement schemes being leaked. Aziz’s family were among those caught up in the breach – and, as a result, were meant to be prioritised.
It comes as we reveal that more than 100 ex-Afghan security forces who fought alongside British and US troops have been killed in Afghanistan in the past two years – with one executed in front of his wife and children.
Confronted by the officers, and dressed in just tracksuit bottoms, a thin T-shirt and slippers, Aziz asked if he could change his clothes – but was refused.
Instead, in chaotic and terrifying scenes, children dressed in pyjamas were loaded with other family members into police trucks and taken away, without having the chance to collect anything from their rooms.
Three family members – Aziz’s son Rayan, along with his wife and young child – managed to avoid being deported by hiding in a hotel bathroom. Instead, as his family was driven away, Rayan sent panicked WhatsApp messages to their British High Commission case worker, pleading for help.
Rayan’s brother, one of the members of the family who had been taken to the deportation camp, phoned him from the site saying their eight-month-old baby was in a bad way. His wife’s breast milk had dried up and they had no access to baby formula or clean water.
