COI Report March 2012 - UK Border Agency - Home Office

SRI LANKA 7 MARCH 2012
A colleague and I from the British High Commission were waiting in the immigration arrivals hall
along with officials from the Police Criminal Investigations Department (CID), the State
Intelligence Service (SIS) and airport security. DIE had brought in Tamil speaking officers, and
CID and SIS had also drafted in extra staff specifically to assist their airport based colleagues in
processing the charter flight returnees.
Once the group of returnees were seated and comfortable, they were addressed by a Tamil
speaking immigration officer who explained what processes they would have to go through. I
then addressed the returnees in English and informed them who I was, again what procedures
they were about to go through, and offered them words of reassurance about the process and
the amount of time it would take. I offered them assistance in contacting waiting relatives or
friends, although we were subsequently asked by DIE officials to wait until they had been
cleared to proceed before making contact. None of the returnees appeared ill or distressed in
any way and their main concerns seemed to be around being reunited with their baggage and
belongings.
At approximately 1115hrs officials from the DIE began interviewing the returnees at the desks in
front of the seating area. The purpose of these interviews was to confirm the identity and
nationality of the returnee. The remaining returnees waited in the seating area and were allowed
to use toilet facilities under the supervision of airport security staff. A water dispenser was
brought for the returnees and officials to use. DIE officials subsequently requested two further
tables and some chairs to enable them to conduct more interviews.
Similarly to the previous charter flight, senior officials from SIS informed me that their officers
and those from CID would carry out a joint interviews rather than separate interviews in order to
speed up the process. Once the returnees had completed their interviews with DIE, they were
escorted either to the SIS office immediately adjacent to the area where they were seated, or
they were taken to CID‘s ground floor interviewing facilities. Each returnee underwent a further
interview regarding their mode and route of travel to the UK, what they had been doing in the
UK and checks to ascertain any criminal activity previously in Sri Lanka.
On completion of the SIS/CID interviews, the returnees were placed back in the seating area.
During the processing of the previous charter flight in June 2011, un-necessary delays had
occurred at this stage whilst waiting for the duty immigration officer to allow them to proceed.
For this charter DIE had removed this requirement and their officials merely stamped each
returnees passport or Emergency Travel Document once the process had been completed.
The first returnee was allowed to proceed at 1320hrs. Representatives from the International
Organization for Migration (IOM) spoke individually to each returnee to hand over a travel grant
in Sri Lankan Rupees equivalent to £50, to enable the returnee to have the means to travel to
their onward address anywhere in Sri Lanka, and for overnight accommodation where required.
Each returnee provided contact details to IOM.
I accompanied most of the returnees to the baggage reclaim area where I liaised with the
handling agent, Sri Lankan Airlines. I oversaw returnees collect their bags from three baggage
272 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.