Gay Iranian demands guarantee he can stay

The Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, has agreed to reconsider a gay Iranian's claim for refugee status in the UK after a Dutch court ruled that he could not stay in Holland where he fled fearing that the UK were about to deport him back to Iran.

Mehdi Kazemi, 19, came to the UK claiming that his former boyfriend had already been executed in Iran and says that any attempt to deport him back there will be a death sentence.

However, even Smith's temporary reprieve appears to have done little to persuade Kazemi that the UK government have had a change of heart.

But speaking from a detention centre in Rotterdam, where he is being held after fleeing to the Netherlands, Mr Kazemi said he fears for his future. "I know what Jacqui Smith has said about my case and that of course is a good thing," he said. "But I know what this government can do to me. They tried to take me at Christmas time two years ago when everyone was away, even my lawyer."

It was only the intervention of his MP, the Liberal Democrat Simon Hughes, which prevented his deportation. In an 11th hour appeal, Mr Hughes persuaded the Home Office to halt the deportation so that he could look into the case.

"I can not be confident they won't try this again, perhaps in the Easter holiday," Mr Kazemi said yesterday. "These things have happened to me before. What they haven't done is promise me I won't go back to Iran."

The case has, rightly, caused outrage across the world, especially when the UK government came out with the ludicrous statement that, if Kazemi remained discreet about his sexuality, he was not in danger in Iran.

It's a little like refusing a Jewish person asylum in Britain during the late thirties and dispatching them back to Germany with the words, "Do you have to be so obvious about your Jewishness?"

Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said: "It is the strong view of my Liberal Democrat colleagues and I that, in the current political climate, there should be an immediate moratorium on deporting gay people to Iran. To do otherwise is tantamount to the government endorsing state-sanctioned murder."

This is the dichotomy that the UK government finds itself in; desperate to condemn the Iranians for their lack of democracy and human rights, but so keen not to seen as soft on immigration that we actually propose sending this young man back to Iran to what would probably be his certain death.

And, lest we forget, all this is being done by a Labour government, the very government which should be fighting to ensure Kazemi's rights.

Announcing the decision to rehear Mr Kazemi's case, Ms Smith said on Thursday: "Following representations made on behalf of Mehdi Kazemi, and in the light of new circumstances since the original decision was made, I have decided that Mr Kazemi's case should be reconsidered on his return to the UK."

All Smith is actually saying here is that this particular case has made too many headlines around the planet for her now to be able to deport this young man. The scandal is that she ever proposed doing so in the first place.

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Tags: Mehdi Kazemi, gay, Iran, asylum, UK, Jacqui Smith, deportation