Court declares detention of asylum seekers unlawful again
Lebogang Baingapi | Friday May 5, 2017 14:53
The three asylum seekers, Marie Iragi (22), Sophia Laheri (30) and Theresa Butayi (30) through their attorney Morgan Moseki petitioned the department of immigration and citizenship arguing that their perpetual detention was unlawful.
They added that as such, they should therefore be released from the FCII with immediate effect and the government should pay the costs of their application. The petitioners have five children whose ages range from one to 15. They come from the volatile North Kivu province in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and came to Botswana in 2015 where they duly presented themselves before authorities and applied to be recognised as refugees.
Justice Lot Moroka yesterday ordered that the petitioners should be released from FCII forthwith and taken to the Dukwi Refugee Camp because it is unlawful to keep them at FCII.
Moroka added that in the meantime, the three women from the politically unstable North Kivu province should be taken to the Dukwi Refugee Camp pending their removal from Botswana to a third country or even back to their country. Moroka said Section 45 of the Immigration Act that the state relied upon to detain the trio at FCII was not the right section to detain failed asylum seekers at FCII. The section, Moroka noted, presupposes that a person has already been declared as an undesirable element, illegal or prohibited immigrant by the minister or immigration officials.
The judge however, explained that there is no document filed in court by the respondents that shows that by detaining the petitioners, they were undesirable elements, illegal or prohibited immigrants. Outside court after the state was ordered to pay the costs of the application, the petitioners’ attorney expressed happiness about the outcome of the case, which he described as sweet.
Moseki said he hoped sense would be knock into the mind of the Attorney General, who is representing the department of immigration and citizenship, so that it can read and understand the law properly.
He added that the AG had the powers to release his clients from the FCII before they even decided to take the litigious way of the courts to resolve the matter.
He said he had always wanted the asylum seekers not to be kept at FCII but his pleas fell on deaf ears. Moseki said he will soon file a similar application for about 100 petitioners still in custody at FCII. He added that he has been instructed by over 500 refugees still kept in perpetual detention at the FCII to file similar applications on their behalf. Iragi, Laheri and Butayi’s victory follow similar recent court cases that were presided over by Justice Zibani Makhwade.