Seven Albanian asylum seekers – including a family of three – were deported without warning on Wednesday evening.
“My client was not informed he was going to be deported until the Asylum Appeals Board released their conclusion,” lawyer Kolbrún Garðarsdóttir, who represents one of the deported, told Fréttablaðið. “We were given an hour’s notice.”
The man in question was denied his right to appeal, and arrested on the spot, Kolbrún says. He was then informed that he would be flown back to his home country of Albania that night. Kolbrún believes the board deliberately expedited the cases of every asylum seeker in the country in order to put them all on the same plane.
The seven Albanians were accompanied by 13 Icelandic police officers, at the expense of FRONTEX, the European Union border control agency. They will also be footing the bill for the hotel stays of the police officers chaperoning the deported asylum seekers.
It is unknown at this time for what reasons the Asylum Appeals Board rejected the refugees’ request for asylum in Iceland.
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