COI Report March 2012 - UK Border Agency - Home Office

7 MARCH 2012 SRI LANKA
Country of Origin Information Service
UK Border Agency
24 June 2011
Dear colleague,
Re: UKBA Charter Flight of Returnees – 16/17 June 2011
At 1700hrs on 16 June 2011 flight BV8862 left London bound for Colombo, Sri Lanka. The flight
had been 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. The flight arrived in
Colombo at 0900hrs on 17 June 2011 with 26 enforced returnees, 22 of whom were failed
asylum seekers. The ethnic split of the returnees was 15 Tamil, 7 Muslim and 4 Sinhala, and
there were 24 males and 2 females. All of 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.
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 at Bandaranaike International Airport.
The aircraft was positioned on a stand some distance from the main terminal building. It was
met by the handling agents, and senior airport security officials. After some minutes, the first of
the returnees were placed into waiting buses along with escorting officers who had
accompanied them from the UK. The buses then drove to the main airport terminal and the
returnees and escorts were dropped at the entrance to the Immigration Arrivals Hall.
Two officials from the British High Commission were waiting in the Immigration Arrivals Hall
along with officials from the Department of Immigration & Emigration (DIE), the Police Criminal
Investigations Department (CID) and the State Intelligence Service (SIS). Airline and airport
security staff were also present. Some CID/SIS officers had been brought in from Colombo to
assist their airport based colleagues in processing the charter flight returnees.
All of the returnees were escorted into the Immigration Arrivals Hall and seated in the main
transit area. Once everyone was seated and comfortable, I addressed the returnees informing
them who I was, what procedures they were about to go through, and offering them words of
reassurance about the process and the amount of time it would take. I also offered them
assistance in contacting waiting relatives or friends, and added that the British High
Commission would assist in reuniting them. None of the returnees appeared ill or distressed in
any way.
At approximately 1000hrs a senior official from the DIE organised the first batch of returnees to
go to a small office adjacent to where they were sitting to be interviewed by his officials to
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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