[News] Albanian prisoners paid by UK government to return home

[Blackfire]

• Albanian authorities have confirmed that most of its citizens forcibly sent back home from the UK this year were convicted of crimes there. The BBC has spoken to those men sent home, and learnt that some prisoners were offered £1,500 to leave - and some plan to come back.

  Each week, a small crowd gathers at the razor-wire fence tucked around the back of Albania's Tirana airport.

  The narrow runway beyond it, pinched between jagged black mountains and the high grey walls of the border police unit, is where UK deportation flights land - closely watched by the families waiting at the fence.

  It takes hours for the deportees to appear, trickling slowly through the gate to be met with hugs, shy smiles and tears.

  Deportation flights to Albania have increased since the country signed a joint co-operation agreement with the UK last December, to "deter and disrupt illegal migration".

  The UK government's Home Office says more than 1,000 people have been returned since then: around half of them voluntary, the rest a combination of failed asylum seekers and foreign offenders.

  The BBC spoke to dozens of people on several of these deportation flights last month, and found that most came from UK prisons.

  Some had been offered money in return for agreeing to deportation, and were released from prison before serving their minimum sentence, under an existing scheme used for foreign offenders.

  Albanian police confirmed that a majority of those forcibly returned this year were convicted of crimes in the UK.

  One cheerful 30-year-old man said he had been serving a six-year sentence for drug offences, and was released for deportation after serving just two of them - a year before he would have been eligible for parole.

  He asked us to hide his identity, so we're calling him Mark.

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• The immigration officer came to see us," he said. "They ask if you want to go back [to Albania] or stay in UK. They explained that if you go back, they take one year off from your sentence."

  Mark was also offered £1,500 in financial support to return home, under a separate programme called the Facilitated Return Scheme (FRS).

  A UK government document clearly states that the scheme is "a financial incentive" offered to foreign prisoners "on the proviso that they co-operate with deportation and waive their right to appeal against it".

  Other prisoners we spoke to on the deportation flights last month had been given the same amount.

  Mark was deported under the UK's Early Release Scheme (ERS), used for foreign prisoners of all nationalities.

  ERS does not require the consent of prisoners, but several Albanian deportees we spoke to, including Mark, said their deportation and sentence reduction were presented as voluntary.

  "It was my choice to come back," Mark told me. "Nobody forced me. They offered it to me. They said, 'You decide if you want to go or want to stay'."

  We asked the Home Office to confirm how many Albanians had been deported under the ERS since the start of last year, and how many had received financial incentives to co-operate, but it said it did not publish these statistics.

  A spokesperson said in a statement: "The UK and Albanian governments work together to take every opportunity to intercept the work of people smugglers and speed up the removal of Albanians with no legal right to be in the UK."

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• Last year, the government's Nationality and Borders Act extended the early release period allowed under the ERS from nine months to a year. One of the aims of that change, according to a Home Office brief, was to increase the number of removals.

  The same Act also abolished the expiry date for unserved sentences, meaning that prisoners who return to the UK illegally will have to serve the rest of their sentence, no matter how much time has passed - increasing the deterrent for people like Mark.

  "I'm not going back there again," he said. "I'm not going to prison. Now I'm going to look for work, I'm going to be a good guy."

  But several of those on the deportation flights last month said they were planning to return to the UK within weeks or even days, despite what many described as a new hard-line approach by police there.

  "They're rounding up Albanians now," one man said. "It's very difficult for Albanians to stay in the UK because police stop you in the road. They don't want us now."

  He said he had been sent back to Albania after police stopped the car he was in and found he was undocumented.

  He is still planning to return.

  Another man said he had already been back and forth to the UK three times. "It's not a problem for me," he said. "I'll go back whenever I want."

  For many of those we spoke to, it was economic opportunities that drew them to the UK.

  Not for Azem, though - a slight man in his late twenties, who seemed lost inside his clothes.

• [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65533198]