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Quote from Colin Firth:

"I was in Argentina working on a film connected with the dictatorship...and encountered people who had been tortured...If I had been sitting in a cell by myself there would be so little hope. The words Amnesty International kept going around in my head as the only hope for a lot of people.

We must stop a deportation that is likely to end in murder The Independent, 26 February 2007, by Colin Firth Sir: Pierre was a nurse in a military hospital in the Democratic Republic of Congo. After the murder of President Kabila, officers were arrested, and Pierre and a doctor were asked to give powerful doses of morphine to them. They refused, and were arrested, beaten and imprisoned. Pierre escaped because his brother bribed the guards, and he managed to get to the UK in 2002. Now he is in Oakington Detention Centre, near Cambridge. He faces deportation today, on a HO-chartered flight to the DRC. Pierre is certain that if he is returned he will be murdered. In 2004, police stopped a car, driven by another Congolese, in which Pierre was a passenger. He was arrested because he was not carrying documents, and held to await removal. Through BID (Bail for Immigration Detainees) he was granted a bail hearing.

The notification stated he was being detained because he had arrived without proper documents, and because he "had tried to obtain money by false pretences using a credit card".

But police told BID South there was no record against him. BID sent a fax to York House for the hearing. The adjudicator said the immigration service should never have mentioned documents because all asylum-seekers came in on false documents and there was no stain on his character. Because of letters of unqualified recommendation by those who knew Pierre, he was given bail without need for sureties.

Since then he has observed all restrictions imposed on him and reported weekly to police. He is also engaged to a woman from the DRC who has exceptional leave to remain. His detention notice includes unsubstantiated charges: "You have previously failed or refused to leave the UK when required to do so." There is no evidence of this. It also reads: "You have not produced satisfactory evidence of your identity, nationality or lawful basis to be in the UK."

People who flee their country never do, as the adjudicator had pointed out. But the HO obviously thinks he is Congolese, or they wouldn't be deporting him there.

It is imperative that this particular deportation is stopped.

COLIN FIRTH

LONDON NW6