LFI chair Steve McCabe MP. David Woolfall, CC BY 3.0.
Labour Friends of Israel chair Steve McCabe MP has today written to Home Secretary Priti Patel to express his “deep concern” about reports that the Home Office intends to deport to Rwanda a former Iranian police commander who had to flee for refusing orders to shoot protestors in 2019.
Noting that the individual concerned will reportedly not be on the first flight to Rwanda, McCabe made clear that he was “surprised” at the original decision to deport the man given his “genuine and well-founded fear of persecution” if sent to the central African country, which has expanded relations with Tehran in recent years.
He also noted that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps operates in many African countries and that the Islamic Republic has “an appalling record of abducting dissidents abroad and forcibly returning them to the country”.
In his letter, McCabe pushed the Home Secretary to “clarify the process by which this decision was taken” and to provide “details of the assessment made of the degree of threat posed to him by Iran” following deportation.
Please find a copy of the letter below.
