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Norwegian police arrest 73 Afghans in immigration raid

Xinhua, November 19, 2016 Adjust font size:

In a large-scale action in the past week, Norwegian police arrested 73 Afghan men who were to depart immediately as their asylum applications had been refused, newspaper Aftenposten reported on Saturday.

The National Police Immigration Service (PU) has released 11 of them after determining that they would not try to escape from the police before the departure. The others appeared in the Oslo district court on Wednesday and Thursday.

According to the court documents, the prison meetings lasted not more than 10 minutes and in many of the cases the expulsion was due to the older age of the boys than previously informed. After medical and dental examinations, the age was determined to be over 18 years old.

According to Aftenposten, all the imprisoned are Afghan men and only five of them have stated the date of birth earlier than in 1991. They had been placed in asylum reception centers throughout Norway.

When an asylum application is refused by the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration (UDI), the applicant can submit an appeal against the decision to the Norwegian Immigration Appeals Board (UNE). In case the appeal is rejected, the applicant usually gets a deadline of four weeks to leave the country.

One of the arrested boys tried to commit suicide regarding the court hearing. According to the court document, he could not be present when passing the sentence, because he "tried to commit suicide in the break before the decision and was hurt."

The Afghan said that he was 16 when he came to Norway and one year later his age was determined to be 20 years old.

For the last few days the Norwegian Organisation for Asylum Seekers (NOAS) has received several inquiries that have risen concern about Afghan asylum seekers being picked up by the police without having been informed of the UNE's decision.

The police has confirmed that all the arrested people have been informed about the negative decision of the UNE after they had been arrested, Aftenposten wrote.

"This is very problematic for many reasons. It weakens the rule of law because the asylum seekers are deprived of the possibility of going through the decision in a proper way and check that there were no errors committed in the treatment. They do not get possibility to contact us or their lawyer, for example. In addition people are deprived of the possibility of choosing voluntary return," Jon Ole Martinsen, a senior advisor in NOAS, told Aftenposten. Endit