The Doldur family – Turkish Kurdish asylum seekers who were taken from their home in Toryglen and put into Dungavel detention centre – have been released on bail of £4000.

The plight of 5-year-old Serhat, his 4-year-old sister Gulban, their mother Zubeyede and father Mehmet Doldur was highlighted in the front page story of the LOCAL NEWS for SOUTHSIDERS last month.

‘Their legal case has been removed from the English courts to the Scottish courts and we are awaiting an advocate’s opinion on the best way forward,’ said Margaret Wood of the Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees. ‘It is outrageous this family had to spend over a month in detention. We are delighted they are now free and will continue to campaign for them to be granted asylum in the way that the rest of Zubeyede Doldur’s brothers and sisters have been.’

But another Turkish Kurdish family were taken from Toryglen while the Doldurs were being returned to their home. Before 7am a woman and her school-aged daughter were forcibly removed from their flat and taken to Dungavel on their way to Manchester where they were to be flown out the next morning at 11am. Her husband was in London trying to find a lawyer when Home Office representatives turned up at the door.

Desperate efforts by London lawyers enabled an injunction to be issued but it took the intervention of a Scottish MSP for that injunction to be formally accepted by the Home Office only half an hour before the plane was due to leave.

‘Clearly there is an increase in the number of arrests across the country,’ said Ms Wood. ‘There is also a huge increase in the number of letters being sent to asylum seekers telling them to report for a flight at Glasgow Airport. Sometimes they are even told a taxi has been booked to take them there. A lot of people are making themselves destitute between receiving the letter and the flight time because they want legal advice and can’t get it fast enough to stop being taken away.’

She added that all detention centres in England appear to be full now because the Home Office is ‘catching up’ on the backlog of cases in order to meet their ‘quotas’.