Asylum seeker 'upset' at age review before death

An asylum seeker who died after being run over on a motorway slip road was "upset" that a social worker did not believe he was a child the day before, an inquest has heard.

Amir Safi was seen "ambling" up an M1 slip road in Nottinghamshire before being found with multiple bone fractures and a brain injury on 28 April last year.

Mr Safi, who died a week later in hospital, had called the result of his age review an "injustice", after claiming he was 16.

At Derby Coroner's Court on Tuesday, coroner Susan Evans concluded Mr Safi died as a result of a road traffic collision.

Mr Safi had lived at the Novotel hotel in Long Eaton, Derbyshire - which was housing adult asylum seekers - for five months after arriving in the UK from France on a small boat in October 2022, the inquest was told.

Jessica Anderson, who was a social worker for Nottinghamshire County Council, carried out Mr Safi's age assessment.

She said: "If we had determined Amir's claimed date of birth and he was a child... he would have been removed from the hotel."

She said he claimed to have been aged 11 in his ID photograph, but she did not believe him and thought he was older than he said.

Ms Anderson agreed that Amir seemed "upset" and "disappointed" with the result, which he had called an "injustice" at the meeting.

Home Office records suggest he was born in January 2000, but the court heard that a translation of his Tazkira - an Afghan identity card - showed his date of birth as October 2006, which would have made him 16 at the time.

Ms Anderson added she had "no doubt" about the decision at the time, but agreed that age assessments could be wrong.

Another Afghan asylum seeker, who shared a room in the hotel with Mr Safi in the three months leading up to his death, said his roommate was "normally happy", but seemed "helpless and hopeless" after the age assessment.

When asked by Nottinghamshire Police, the National Document Fraud Unit said it was not possible to verify the identity document because of a "lack of robust security features".

Coroner Ms Evans said she did not have reliable evidence about Mr Safi's date of birth, and recorded it as "unknown".

The inquest heard Mr Safi told the Home Office that he had wanted to claim asylum because he "feared" the Taliban, and thought they would kill him.

He said he paid £1,800 to smugglers, who put him in a small boat from France after travelling by car and foot for more than a year to Iran and Turkey from his home country Afghanistan, the inquest was told.

On 28 April, Mr Safi left the hotel at about 04:28 BST, and that the limited street lighting and his dark clothing meant drivers would not have seen him.

The court heard he may have been struck by multiple vehicles on the slip road.

Ms Evans added: "I have considered whether Amir died as a result of suicide but I'm unable to conclude that he did. There is no evidence before me that he had any intention to end his life."

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