An Iraqi Kurdish journalist is scheduled to be deported from the United Kingdom on Saturday, and is at risk of grave harm if he is returned to his home country.
Ghazi Ghareeb Zorab was arrested in Manchester on Monday and told he would be deported to Jordan, from where he would be taken to Iraq, the Middle East Eye reported. The journalist is currently being held in a removal centre in London.
“I would be persecuted, I would be killed, I would be imprisoned,” Zorab told the news website. “Journalists are killed in the [Kurdistan Region of Iraq].”
Zorab had written about the “brutality” of KRI’s ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), both when he was in Iraq and after he left.
In 2019, he briefly visited Britain for a conference where he voiced criticism on the KRI’s human rights record. He was soon forced to leave Iraq for good and go back to Britain on the same tourist visa, as he was receiving death threats. He applied for asylum in 2020, but his application was rejected. The appeals procedure was ongoing, and the journalist’s lawyers have submitted a new application after his Monday arrest.
Zorab joined protests in Britain against the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and campaigned for other journalists who were subjected to violence in Iraqi Kurdistan, including Sardasht Osman who was shot to death in Mosul in 2010 after writing critically about the KRG.
Few Iraqis have been granted asylum in Britain over the years, and the British government believes there are “parts of [Iraq] where it will be reasonable for a person to relocate”, the Middle East Eye said.
The National Union of Journalists urged authorities to stop the deportation procedure and demonstrate commitment to the protection of journalists. The British union believes the government’s decision would put Zorab’s life at risk.
