Albanian Prisoners Offered £1,500 By Uk Government To Return Home
Albanian government have confirmed that most of its citizens forcibly sent back home from the United Kingdom (UK) this year were convicted of various crimes.
BBC reports that some of the men were prisoners offered £1,500 to leave – but some of them have plans to come back to the United Kingdom (UK).
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, is where UK deportation flights land – closely watched by the families waiting by the fence.
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.
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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.
