Britain has paid compensation of over £1 million ($1.6 million, 1.2 million euros) to 40 child asylum seekers wrongly detained as adults, a newspaper reported on Saturday. The interior ministry paid out an additional £1 million in costs, the Guardian said, in a case involving children from countries including China, Afghanistan and Iran as well as African nations Somalia, Eritrea, Uganda and Nigeria.
The children, who arrived in Britain without their families, according to their lawyer, were in some cases locked in adult detention centres for more than a month, the British daily said. Some had been tortured and others had been raped before fleeing to Britain, it reported. The youngest detainee was a 14-year-old girl from Sri Lanka.
"They had committed no crime, yet were detained by the immigration service in conditions the Home Office (interior ministry) admitted were unsuitable for them," said Mark Scott of Bhatt Murphy solicitors. "Despite the widespread concerns about what was going on, the Home Office did nothing to change the situation until they were forced to do so by children bringing litigation."
The Guardian said the case was believed to be the first payout to child asylum seekers detained as adults in Britain, and the biggest ever immigration detention payout for a single case. A spokesman for the UK Border Agency told the newspaper that great care was taken to assess the age of asylum seekers arriving in Britain. "Where there is any doubt over an individual's age, they will not be detained unless an independent local authority age assessment concludes that they are over 18," he said.
"These checks are carried out by social workers with expert knowledge." Officials told the Guardian that government policy had changed since the case, which was concluded in 2010 and only revealed now through freedom of information legislation. But the newspaper said it had been passed data showing that children are still being detained as adults. The Refugee Council charity worked with 22 children in 2011 that were confirmed as having been wrongly detained as adults and some of their cases have yet to be resolved, the daily said.