By GB News (World News) | Created at 2025-04-02 15:56:14 | Updated at 2025-04-03 14:13:24
22 hours ago
A former senior BBC correspondent has helped a Pakistani asylum seeker avoid deportation by supporting his human rights claim.
Dr Owen Bennett-Jones, who was the long-time host of the World Service's Newshour programme, backed the man's claim that he faced arrest by security services and imprisonment if returned to Pakistan.
The broadcaster provided expert testimony about Pakistan's prison conditions to the tribunal.
The Pakistani migrant, who was granted anonymity, arrived in the UK on a student visa in 2010 after fleeing his home country.
The Home Office had argued that Dr Bennett-Jones was 'an expert on extremism rather than the Pakistan military' - which a judge slapped down
AGA KHAN UNIVERSITY
The ex-BBC man helped the migrant buck the Home Office's deportation order
PA
The asylum seeker claimed the Taliban had attempted to recruit him due to his experience as a radar technician (file photo)
GETTY
The judge stated: "We find that Dr Bennett-Jones has an impressive CV."
He noted that Bennett-Jones had been the BBC's Islamabad bureau chief and reported on South Asia for 25 years.
The judge also highlighted that Bennett-Jones ran seminars for British diplomats and civil servants and held a PhD.
Judge Hoffman concluded: "We are satisfied that if the [man] was to be arrested and detained on return to Pakistan as a deserter from the PAF, then his removal would breach the UK's obligations under Article 3."
The tribunal accepted evidence that the likely punishment for desertion is imprisonment.
The judge ruled that considering all evidence "in the round", the asylum seeker was indeed on the exit control list.
The man was subsequently granted refugee status, overruling the Home Office's deportation order.
