A FAMILY of Afghan asylum-seekers who won a High Court ruling that they had been illegally deported to Germany have lost an appeal to be allowed to return to Britain.

Farid Ahmadi, 33, his wife, Feriba, 25, and children Hadia, 7, and Seear, 5, were told that, although their removal from the United Kingdom had proved traumatic and had been carried out illegally, it was “a necessary part of an effective immigration policy”. Lawyers for the family say that they are now considering a further appeal.

The family fled Taleban rule in Afghanistan in 2000 and first sought asylum in Germany after being abandoned there by people smugglers. They alleged torture and human rights abuses as reasons for seeking refuge, but then fled to the UK, where they made a similar application, claiming that they faced religious and racial bigotry in Germany.

David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, ordered that the family be sent back to Germany after police and immigration officials seized them during a raid on a mosque in Lye, near Stourbridge in the West Midlands, in August.

They were put on a chartered aircraft to Germany but a month later the High Court in London declared the deportation unlawful, saying that the Ahmadis had a right to appeal on human rights grounds. During the appeal, heard in Hatton Cross, West London, with a video link to Nuremberg in Germany, the Ahmadis repeated claims of torture and added that they had suffered ill-health as a result of their deportation.

But Judith Davidson, the adjudicator, said that the stories of torture had been fabricated and complaints of poor conditions in German asylum camps exaggerated.

“I do not accept that there was any direct attack on the family. I find that he was not tortured as described,” she said.

“The living conditions in Germany are clearly not as attractive as those that they left in Lye, but to my mind they are adequate.” Mrs Ahmadi was admitted to a psychiatric ward after collapsing on the second day of the proceedings. Mrs Davidson said that the deterioration in Mrs Ahmadi’s health was “a self-fulfilling prophecy”.

“The health problems of this family do not come about as a result of any action by the UK Government. Deportation is by its very nature unpleasant. It is, however, a necessary part of an effective immigration policy which every state has the right to enforce,” she said.

Pierre Makhlouf, the family’s lawyer, said: “The family are distraught. We believe that the decision is wrong in law and it cannot be just to effect immigration controls in a situation where a family, such as this one, will not be able to function normally. The future, particularly in relation to the eldest child, looks bleak.”

The pressure group Committee to Defend Asylum Seekers called Mrs Davidson’s ruling “barbaric”. A spokesman said: “It is a deeply political ruling. They wanted to uphold immigration law before the human rights of the family.”

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