COI Report March 2012 - UK Border Agency - Home Office

7 MARCH 2012 SRI LANKA
after they have returned to their home address they receive a follow-up visit from their local
police to confirm their presence.
On completion of their procedures CID will walk the returnee back to DIE. The duty immigration
officer will then endorse the returnee‘s passport/emergency passport with an immigration arrival
stamp and hand it back to the returnee. The returnee will then be allowed to proceed to the Duty
Free area, baggage reclaim and Customs. Emergency passports are considered full official
documents issued by the Sri Lankan authorities. They are a proof of identity and are valid to go
through any checkpoints.
In general, the situation regarding all returnees regardless of race or creed appears to be more
relaxed now. There is still inconsistency in the way individuals are dealt with and the British
High Commission are aware that some returnees are not even identified by the authorities, or
they are but they are allowed to proceed without undergoing the SIS/CID interviewing process.
The border authorities have amended their procedures for the UKBA charter flights of returnees
in order to speed up the process and this has been reported separately.
There is strong anecdotal evidence that scarring has been used in the past to identify suspects.
Previous conversations with the police and in the media, the authorities have openly referred to
physical examinations being used to identify whether suspects have undergone military style
training. Contacts in government ministries suggest that this practice has either ceased or is
used less frequently. At the very least it appears that the security forces only conduct these
when there is another reason to suspect an individual, and are not looking for particular scars
as such, but anything that may indicate the suspect has been involved in fighting and/or military
training. There is no recent evidence to suggest that these examinations are routinely carried
out on immigration returnees.
The British High Commission are aware of the arrest of six returnees from the UK on their
arrival at Bandaranaike International Airport. Two were arrested by CID for forgery offences in
2010, and three were arrested by CID for forgery offences in 2011. One man, who arrived on
the 29 September 2011 charter flight was arrested by local uniformed police as the subject of an
outstanding arrest warrant, and was transferred to Kalmunai where he was subsequently
charged with murder. All six of these returnees were processed by the Sri Lankan judicial
system through the Courts.
On 10 February 2011 a man was returned who had gone through the entire asylum and appeal
process in the UK as a Sri Lankan national. He had also been issued with an emergency
passport by the Sri Lankan High Commission in London. On arrival in Colombo he informed the
immigration officer that he was in fact an Indian national and he provided a completely different
identity. The Sri Lankan authorities did not approach the British High Commission in Colombo to
arrange for his return to the UK, which they were entitled to under our bilateral readmission
agreement, but instead held him at the airport and contacted the Indian High Commission in
Colombo. He was subsequently interviewed by the Indian authorities, issued with a travel
document and was removed to Chennai, India. Apart from these cases, no UK returnees have
been held for more than 7 hours on arrival, none have been arrested and detained, and none
have complained about their treatment on arrival by the authorities.
Negotiations are currently taking place regarding the implementation of the EU-Sri Lanka
Readmission Agreement (EURA). A project funded by the European Union has contracted the
International Organization for Migration (IOM) to take this forward. The Government of Sri
Lanka have indicated that they will develop their arrival procedures and redocumentation
processes for the implementation of the EURA, adding that these will apply across the board for
Sri Lankan returnees from all countries in the world. DIE have indicated that they wish to launch
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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