Runaway Rabar held

SEEKING asylum . . . Rabar with (from left) Breeze Hill head teacher Bernard Phillips, Bob Miller and Sally Hyman

AGE-row asylum seeker Rabar Hamad has been detained after going missing and is now set to be deported.

The Home Office says it will seek the Iraqi student’s removal from Britain as soon as possible.

But Rabar’s supporters are hoping a fresh claim for asylum will delay the process and enable him to stay in his adopted homeland.

The former Breeze Hill pupil insists he is 16 but the authorities claim he is 20. They say the orphan, whose parents were killed in a bomb blast in 2008, has no right to be in the country as he’s no longer covered by rules for caring for a minor.

Rabar was due to be made homeless on August 5 and deported but went missing soon afterwards.

He was staying out of the area but around a dozen police and UK Border Agency officers swooped on Friday at Manchester Piccadilly train station as he returned to see his barrister.

It’s believed Rabar was taken to a police station before being transported to London where he is staying in a short-stay detention and deportation centre.

His English teacher Sally Hyman is running a campaign to save Rabar from deportation.

She said: “He was on his way to consult a barrister about a judicial review when he was detained. They stopped him seeing his barrister.

“They refused to tell us where he was so we weren’t able to call him or make sure he kept his barrister’s appointment.

“Rabar contacted us yesterday afternoon. He’s very distressed, depressed and scared. He’s a 16-year-old lad in an adult detention centre. He’s very down and does not want to eat. I think it’s pretty grim. It’s a bit dire. He needs to be treated with a little more kindness.”

Mrs Hyman is travelling to London today to take Rabar some clean clothes, money and the papers he needs. He has not yet been served with a departure date and a solicitor will be engaged to make a fresh claim she hopes will put a stop to proceedings.

She believes he ran away as having to relive the death of his parents in interviews had caused post-traumatic stress, causing him to repeat his actions when he fled Iraq.

Rabar says documents which would prove his age have been lost and that the Home Office will not accept photocopies.

Campaigners dismissed initial reports that they were hiding him, saying they had no idea where he was and that they were worried for his health and emotional state.

An on-line petition calling for Rabar to be allowed to stay has now collected 1,194 signatures, while a Facebook campaign received thousands more. But others say Rabar has no right to stay in the country.

Rabar had originally arrived in Wigan after spending 10 days in the wheel-arch of a truck. He was first assessed by social workers who said he was 18 but his age was reassessed by an independent tribunal doctor, who recorded that he was aged between 13 and 16.

Wigan Council paid for a place for him at a home in Oldham. But in a second assessment by the council, he was judged to be 20.

David Wood, strategic director for criminality and detention at the Home Office, said: “Immigration absconders are liable to be arrested on sight. Anyone facilitating their continued presence runs the risk of prosecution, an unlimited fine and up to 14 years’ imprisonment.”