UK pauses plans to deport guards who risked lives to protect British embassy staff in Kabul
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Loading... - Sophie Berger
- 06 Apr 2023
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The UK Home Office has deferred its plans to deport three Nepalese security guards who helped protect British embassy staff in Afghanistan, and released a fourth who was being detained, the Guardian reported on Wednesday.
Eleven Nepalese and two Indian guards, several of whom were said to have risked their lives to protect British personnel and embassy staff in Kabul, were airlifted to the UK when Western forces withdrew from the country in late 2021 and the Taliban seized control.
The Home Office arrested and detained 10 of the men on March 27. One of them, 37-year-old Bam Bahadur Gurung, was released on Wednesday. The Nepali national spent more than 10 years in Afghanistan, working for part of that time as a security guard at the British and Canadian embassies in Kabul. In 2016, several of his colleagues were killed in a suicide bombing that targeted consular guards.
“I am delighted but I do not understand what is happening,” he told The Guardian after he was notified he would be released.
“I’ve been told to go to the reception area of the detention center but nobody is explaining anything.”
Kumar Bahadar Gurung, who was injured in the 2016 suicide bombing, is among those who remain in detention. He is being held in an immigration removal facility at Heathrow. Read More..
