Suspected war criminals from Sri Lanka are amongst the 135 people that Britain has failed to deport, reports the Daily Mail.
The suspects have reportedly been involved in “bloody conflicts in Rwanda, Afghanistan, Libya, Serbia and Sri Lanka”.
Despite having their application for British citizenship rejected, they have managed to avoid deportation from the UK. None of the cases have been referred to Britain’s war crimes investigation unit.
“On the face of it, it’s hard to understand how all these individuals could have raised such serious concerns during a citizenship process yet apparently nothing at all be done over potentially putting these people on trial,” said Allan Hogarth of Amnesty International.
“If there are reasonable grounds to suspect that a person here has been involved in acts of torture, war crimes or even genocide in a foreign country then surely the Home Office must be alerting the police and prosecution authorities who have a duty to act.”
Kevin Laue, of Redress, a charity that works for justice for war crimes said, “People refused citizenship because they are suspected of war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide or torture should always be investigated by the Met so that they can be prosecuted here, if there is sufficient evidence to do so”.
“These are the most serious crimes imaginable and the police should have sufficient resources to investigate all suspects properly, which they cannot do if the Home Office doesn’t refer them to the Met.”
Meanwhile the British government responded to the report by saying that it takes “take allegations of involvement in war crimes extremely seriously and apply a robust approach to dealing with any immigration cases linked to war crimes”.
“This year we have revised the referral process so that the police are sighted on every case where a negative immigration decision will be taken due to suspicion that an individual in the UK has had involvement in war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide or torture,” said the Home Office.