Removal threat for asylum seeker

A disabled asylum-seeker from Kenya faces removal from the UK despite fighting a Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) case, following a ruling in the High Court.

Peter Gitau Gichura, a wheelchair-user, has had several asylum applications rejected since his arrival in the UK in June 2001.

But in May, the Court of Appeal ruled that Mr Gichura had a case under the DDA on the grounds that the law did offer protection to disabled people in prisons and detention centres before December 2006 and the introduction of the disability equality duty (DED).

He was held at Harmondsworth Detention Centre in west London in February and August 2006.

He claims that bathroom facilities there were inaccessible and that he received inadequate medical treatment (Disability Now, July 2007, News).

But in the High Court James Goudy QC said that Mr Gichura did not need to be in the UK to communicate with his legal team in the preparations for his DDA case.

Peter Gichura said: "As someone with spinal injury vulnerable to chronic kidney infection, I need sanitary living conditions to survive -- but there is no running water.  I cannot afford medical treatment -- there is no free healthcare in Kenya."

He added: "Contacting my solicitor will be impossible.  The roads are inaccessible especially when it rains; movement is impossible without help.  Transport is a nightmare for people with disabilities.  Access to buildings, vehicles, even public phone booths is non-existent."

Mr Gichura's legal team plans to appeal against the high court ruling.

The DDA case is likely to be heard in 2009.

Claire Glasman, from WinVisible, a disability rights group campaigning on behalf of Mr Gichura, said: "It is shocking that a severely disabled person in the middle of preparing a precedent case under the DDA, and who fled anti-Kikuyu persecution, can be returned."

Mr Gichura, a member of the Kikuyu ethnic group, fled Kenya after he allegedly received death threats from government officials.