LONDON: Asylum seekers have said they were “treated like animals” while housed at a decommissioned army facility in the UK that the government had previously been warned was unsafe.
Former residents of Napier Barracks in Kent claimed that their conditions were “inhumane,” and that some even attempted suicide.
There have been repeated calls for the site to be closed after a fire broke out on Jan. 29 amid disturbances, after at least 120 people caught COVID-19 at the barracks while being forced to live in cramped conditions that prevented social distancing.
At a court hearing on Wednesday, it emerged that the government had previously been warned by Public Health England that the barracks was “not suitable” for housing people during a pandemic.
“It was really shocking for me,” an Iranian asylum seeker called Majid, who spent over four months there, told Sky News. “Twenty-eight people were in each block with just two toilets and two showers in a block. Everyone slept close to each other, sharing the same air. There were no supplies to clean or take care of our health.”
He added: “I saw several people attempt suicide and others were self-harming. They were desperate, afraid. We’ve been treated like criminals.”
Another asylum seeker called Mohamed said: “The security officers treated us very badly. They didn’t want to hear from us, and we weren’t allowed to speak to anyone in authority.”
He suggested that the conditions in which he and his fellow residents were kept were what led to the disturbances in January. “We were so shocked at the state of the barracks, and it was this frustration that boiled over,” he said.
Majid said: “I was in my room, and I heard my friend say one of the blocks is on fire. I felt really unsafe and it really traumatized me, seeing the fire, seeing the fear in everyone’s eyes.”
The number of residents at the barracks, which was subject to an inspection earlier this month, has since been reduced from over 400 to 63.
Immigration Compliance Minister Chris Philp said in a statement: “Napier has previously accommodated army personnel, and it is wrong to say it is not adequate for asylum seekers. The department takes the welfare of those in our care extremely seriously.”
Asylum seekers: UK facility ‘inhumane’
https://arab.news/rpahn
Asylum seekers: UK facility ‘inhumane’
- Conditions at Napier Barracks led to spread of COVID-19 in January
- UK government warned previously by Public Health England that site “unsafe” amid pandemic
Italian suspect questioned over Bosnia ‘weekend sniper’ killings
- The octogenarian former truck driver from the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region of northeast Italy, is suspected by Milan prosecutors of “voluntary homicide aggravated by abject motives,” according to Italian news agency ANSA
ROME: An 80-year-old man suspected of being a “weekend sniper” who paid the Bosnian Serb army to shoot civilians during the 1990s siege of Sarajevo was questioned Monday in Milan, media reported.
The octogenarian former truck driver from the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region of northeast Italy, is suspected by Milan prosecutors of “voluntary homicide aggravated by abject motives,” according to Italian news agency ANSA.
Lawyer Giovanni Menegon told journalists that his client had answered questions from prosecutors and police and “reaffirmed his complete innocence.”
In October, prosecutors opened an investigation into what Italian media dubbed “weekend snipers” or “war tourists“: mostly wealthy, gun-loving, far-right sympathizers who allegedly gathered in Trieste and were taken to the hills surrounding Sarajevo where they fired on civilians for sport.
During the nearly four-year siege of Sarajevo that began in April 1992 some 11,541 men, women and children were killed and more than 50,000 people wounded by Bosnian Serb forces, according to official figures.
Il Giornale newspaper reported last year that the would-be snipers paid Bosnian Serb forces up to the equivalent of €100,000 ($115,000) per day to shoot at civilians below them.
The suspect — described by the Italian press as a hunting enthusiast who is nostalgic for Fascism — is said to have boasted publicly about having gone “man hunting.”
Witness statements, particularly from residents of his village, helped investigators to track the suspect, freelance journalist Marianna Maiorino said.
“According to the testimonies, he would tell his friends at the village bar about what he did during the war in the Balkans,” said Maiorino, who researched the allegations and was herself questioned as part of the investigation.
The suspect is “described as a sniper, someone who enjoyed going to Sarajevo to kill people,” she added.
The suspect told local newspaper Messaggero Veneto Sunday he had been to Bosnia during the war, but “for work, not for hunting.” He added that his public statements had been exaggerated and he was “not worried.”
The investigation opened last year followed a complaint filed by Italian journalist and writer Ezio Gavanezzi, based on allegations revealed in the documentary “Sarajevo Safari” by Slovenian director Miran Zupanic in 2022.
Gavanezzi was contacted in August 2025 by the former mayor of Sarajevo, Benjamina Karic, who filed a complaint in Bosnia in 2022 after the same documentary was broadcast.
The Bosnia and Herzegovina prosecutor’s office confirmed on Friday that a special war crimes department was investigating alleged foreign snipers during the siege of Sarajevo.
Bosnian prosecutors requested information from Italian counterparts at the end of last year, while also contacting the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals in The Hague, it said. That body performs some of the functions previously carried out by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
Sarajevo City Council adopted a decision last month authorizing the current mayor, Samir Avdic, to “join the criminal proceedings” before the Italian courts, in order to support Italian prosecutors.
