COI Report March 2012 - UK Border Agency - Home Office

7 MARCH 2012 SRI LANKA
Country of Origin Information Service
UK Border Agency
19 December 2011
Dear colleague,
Re: UKBA Charter Flight of Returnees – 15/16 December 2011
A flight chartered by the UK Border Agency specifically for the return of Sri Lankan nationals
who did not qualify for leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom, left London on 15
December 2011 bound for Colombo. The arrival time was delayed due to a medical emergency
involving one of the escorting officers. The Captain diverted the aircraft to land in Istanbul,
Turkey to allow the officer to be hospitalised before continuing. Flight OR7603 arrived at
Bandaranaike International Airport at 1127hrs on 16 December 2011 with 55 enforced
returnees, many of whom were failed asylum seekers. The ethnic split of the returnees was 39
Tamil, 9 Muslim and 7 Sinhala, and there were 48 males and 7 females. The returnees were in
possession of their own valid national passport or an Emergency Travel Document issued by
the Sri Lankan High Commission in London. One was in possession of a Common Provisional
Travel Document which had been endorsed by both the UK Border Agency and the Sri Lankan
High Commission.
Prior negotiations had taken place in both London and Colombo between the UK and Sri
Lankan governments under the 2004 bilateral readmission agreement in order to facilitate the
redocumentation of the returnees, the necessary authorisations for the aircraft, and the smooth
arrival and processing of the returnees on arrival in Sri Lanka. The experience gained during the
previous UKBA charter flights in June and September 2011 allowed all parties to review
procedures ahead of the flights‘ arrival. It had been agreed with the government of Sri Lanka
that UKBA could return up to 50 returnees on the flight. At the time of departure however UK
Border Agency requested if an additional 5 returnees could be placed on the aircraft. Contact
was made with border control authorities in Sri Lanka who indicated that it would not be a
problem.
On arrival the aircraft was positioned on a stand some distance from the main terminal building.
It was met by the handling agents, Sri Lankan Airlines, and airport security officials. After some
minutes the returnees were split into one group of 29 and another of 26, placed on two buses
with a small number of airport security officials and driven to the main airport terminal. The
returnees were dropped at the entrance to the immigration arrivals hall and the first returnee to
emerge at the top of the escalators was presented with a purple garland by a female member of
the airport staff. It was later claimed that this had been arranged by the State Intelligence
Services (SIS) who had photographed and videoed the presentation and arrival of the
returnees. All of the returnees were escorted to a seating area adjacent to the transfer desk
The main text of this COI Report contains the most up to date publicly available information as at 3 February 2012.
Further brief information on recent events and reports has been provided in the Latest News section
to 2 March 2012.
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