We’re encouraging people to write to Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary to encourage her to stay Hich’s deportation. There’s a model letter below, please personalise it, but try and stick to the key points.
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith
E-mail: indpublicenquiries@ind.homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk
Fax: 0208 760 3132
From:
Date:
Dear Home Secretary,
RE: Hicham Yezza – HOME OFFICE REFERENCE: Y76064
I am contacting you about the case of Mr. Hicham Yezza, who is facing deportation to Algeria on Flight BA894 from Heathrow, destination Algiers, at 9.45am this Sunday, June 1st.
As you know, it has been established that Mr. Yezza has no involvement in activity that threatens public safety. In spite of the basis for his original arrest, no charges were ever brought and he is clear of all suspicion. Hicham was then charged with offences relating to his immigration status. He has expressed his willingness to contest the charges in a court of law, but has been denied this basic right to a fair hearing. It is alarming that the Home Office seems to have lost interest in this legal process and is willing to deport him so hurriedly.
Mr. Yezza has been resident in the U.K. for 13 years, during which time he has studied for both undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in Nottingham and contributed to the academic and wider community of Nottingham. He has formed many strong friendships and an application for indefinite leave to remain is underway. He has established himself as a voracious reader and an authority on literature and music and he had been planning to make his yearly trip to Wales for the Hay Festival when he was suddenly arrested.
I implore you to intervene to halt the deportation before it is too late to rectify what seems to be a very hurried and unjust process. Hicham has been incarcerated and interrogated since Wednesday May 15th without charges or a trial as an end result. He is denied the chance to address charges or defend himself in court. I urge you consider how this appears to the general public like myself, who are wondering how a rushed and unjust deportation can be preferable to establishing the truth.
Please do not deport Hicham Yezza in this hurried fashion, and allow him the chance to defend himself in a proper hearing.
Yours sincerely,
Support Hicham Yezza 
write now! every minute counts
Email Jacqui Smith at smithjj@parliament.uk
or fax on 0208 760 3132
Sorry – actually, contact Jacqui Smith at
indpublicenquiries@ind.homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk
Good model letter. I’ve just this minute sent it off to Jaqui Smith. I hope it helps.
What is the process being used to accelerate the deportation? None of the reports I have seen give any details of this. On the face of it (from activists materials and news reports) it does appear to have been accelerated. But how? Without that information it is difficult to make an argument against the deportation, with the home office/home secretary.
This is awful but nothing suprises me any more. Have sent a leter, I just hope it works
Mike
Oxford STW
just sent it off. hope it is still helpful as it is saturday today.
In response to Brian B , educated guess that Hich was due an immigration tribunal hearing on 16th July 2008 to determine 2 matters: whether or not the Home Office are correct in stating that they will not grant him leave to remain because of his long previous stay in the UK, and his liability to be removed. However, J Smith in her wisdom and at her discretion as Home Secretary has decided that “his presence in the UK is no longer conducive to the public good” and decided to deport. This administrative decision can and should have been immediately Judicially Reviewed at the High Court, there is a “duty judge” 24/7 for this purpose, and can still be challenged even after deportation, as a breach of Article 5 of the ECHR. Sorry for being long winded and late reply
It’s good to see the support being given which gives the Government a clear indication that they do not act according to the wishes of the thinking and feeling British public when they make decisions such as this supposedly, as our representatives and on our behalf. It is about time the insensitive incarceration and subsequent return of innocent people and even families was stopped. I am NOT proud to be British.
Jayne
It is not surprising at all. Muslims are being scapegaoted,harassed,abused, raped and killed by the zions,neocons and rightwingers of the west. society at large in this society thinks that these appalling practices are normal human behaviour. No matter what one says, if the public at large wants the government to stop attacking islam,they should lobby parliament and they are quite happy with the status quo
Copy of letter to government:
Dear Jaqui Smith…
I am sixty years old.
I have served in the London Ambulance Service, the London Fire Brigade and, last and by all means least – with the Met Police.
So I am not your actual nutter responding to weird stuff.
I have voted Labour all of my life. If this poor guy is deported, then I am going to vote Conservative.
Do the right thing. Please.
I remain, Madam
John Neighbour.
I hope my email got there in time. This is by way of an addendum to the letter:
I recently left England after living there for eighteen months (having spent much of my adult life abroad). I am British, 30, and a teacher, poet and writer. The reason I left was because of increasing idiocy over anti-terror laws and the public’s (my friends included) increasingly asserted ignorance over the casualties of these newest government follies.
Jaqui Smith is a new low for a country that, given the latest example of Hicham Yezza, could easily be now classed as a police state.
I am a sane and peaceful person and will continue to be so… but when a government can class a harmless student as a criminal and deport him or her within a matter of days then your average man/woman on the street must ask him/herself some very searching questions.
If the public do not, en masse, acknowledge, by sustained vocal protest, that their rights as citizens have been so eroded to the point of this kind of lawlessness then the situation in Britain will not change. I hope with every fibre of my body that it does change. But it will not happen if the crippling fear and apathy continues.
I will vote green.
Isn’t it time the Labour Party stopped aligning themselves with Robert Kagan et al and his PNAC ideologies? The contrived ‘war on terror’ has gone too far and I’ve had enough of the Government’s fascist policies. My copy has been sent.
Sonia