Mentally unfit refugees unfairly targeted by Home Office
The charity Asylum Link Merseyside cites case of victim of torture denied health assessment and sent back to Pakistan

The Home Office is covertly targeting the most vulnerable asylum seekers – those considered mentally unfit, or victims of torture – for deportation as part of the government's hardline stance on immigration, according to lawyers and charity workers.

Lawyers claim that asylum seekers are being forced to leave the UK without having a proper psychological or health assessment, both obligations under human rights legislation and UK immigration rules.

A spokesman for Asylum Link Merseyside said the government had started selecting the most vulnerable cases for removal. He said: "This is a concerted attempt to deport those with mental illness: it ties in with attempts to whittle down the backlog of such cases as quickly as possible. It's horrible."

Shamik Dutta of Bhatt Murphy solicitors in London said: "The Home Office has repeatedly been criticised by our courts for unlawfully detaining the victims of torture and those suffering from mental illness. It is therefore inevitable that some of those people go on to suffer the terror of unlawful removal."

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jan/25/mentally-unfit-refugees-home-office-charity