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Friday 4 April 2008

Iranian exile in UK soon?

Mehdi Kazemi, the nineteen-year-old Iranian gay man who fears for his life if he's returned to Iran, could be in the UK very soon, according to the Dutch.

Kazemi fled after his boyfriend was executed in Tehran for being gay, after, it is thought, naming Mehdi as a gay man. He came to the UK, where he was studying, and applied for asylum, but was refused. So he fled to Holland. Holland is now about to send him back, as is custom, to the country from which he fled, and says it has confidence in the British asylum system.

One Dutch MP, Boris van der Ham, fears the British will deport Kazemi, yet the Dutch justice minister has said she will not be seeking reassurances from the Home Office here.

See the full story here.

The Independent ran a campaign to save Kazemi from being sent back to Iran: see here, here, here and here.

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