The deportation of hundreds of Darfuri asylum-seekers was halted yesterday after three judges ruled that the conditions in camps near Khartoum were “unduly harsh”.

John Reid, the Home Secretary, lost his attempt to continue removing failed asylum-seekers to squatter areas or refugee camps near the capital of Sudan. He suffered another setback when the Court of Appeal refused him permission to take the case to the House of Lords.

Three refugees from Darfur won appeals against rulings by the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal.

Hundreds of Darfuris are now expected to remain in Britain, having fled violence and human rights violations in their homeland in western Sudan. The three appeal court judges rejected the Home Secretary’s argument that Britain would discharge its international obligations to the Darfuris by sending them back to live in squatter areas or refugee camps.

Lord Justice Buxton, sitting with Lords Justices Moore-Bick and Moses, said that the three black African subsistence farmers — identified only as AH, IG and NM — were victims or potential victims of persecution by marauding Arab Janjawid, “persecution which the Government of Sudan has connived in or at the very least not restrained”, he said.

There was no shortage of material suggesting a real risk of ill-treatment to nonArab Darfuris who were returned as failed asylum-seekers. But there was very little substantiated evidence of such illtreat-ment. Nouraldean Mohammed, one of the refugees, fled Darfur in 2004 after his village was attacked by the Janjawid. He said: “This decision gives me hope to live. I know I have survived now.”

The ruling, however, did not encompass new evidence of the torture of a Darfuri asylum-seeker returned to Khartoum last month. That evidence was successfully used to win an eleventh-hour appeal against the deportation of Mohammed Abdulhadi Ali, who was to have been flown to Khartoum on Tuesday.

The ruling came in the midst of an apparent campaign by the Home Office to round up and deport Darfuri asylum-seekers before any ban by the courts. The action has drawn criticism from campaigners and opposition politicians, in particular because of the Home Office’s close cooperation with the Sudanese Embassy.

Dozens of Darfuri asylum-seekers who have been called to report to immigration offices in recent weeks have been confronted without warning by Sudanese embassy officials drafted in to verify their identity.

The last person that Musa Yakub Daoud expected to see at an appointment to discuss his asylum claim was a representative of the Government he had fled. But when he turned up on Monday morning at a reporting centre in Leeds, it was Sudanese, not British, officials who were there to meet him. “I was shocked,” said Mr Daoud, who arrived in Britain in October 2004. “These are my enemies — why were they there?”

The officials demanded to know where he was from but when Mr Daoud refused to answer, the exchange grew heated. “We know you are from Geneina,” they told him. “You are a garaba,” they said, a slave, a derogatory term used by some Sudanese Arabs to describe black Africans from Darfur.

The confrontation turned into a fight and ended when police separated the men. Mr Daoud was allowed to leave. But the incident has thrown light on the Home Office’s cooperation with Sudanese government officials after claims by Darfuri refugees that they are at risk of persecution by that very government.

The Home Office said that it “seeks the assistance of other governments in order to document immigration offenders”, including Darfuris whose asylum claims were still in the appeal process.

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