Petition to save Cardiff man Bashir Naderi being deported
- Published
A woman from Cardiff is fighting to save her 19-year-old boyfriend from being deported to Afghanistan.
Bashir Naderi, of Cathays, has lived in Cardiff for the past nine years but is being removed from the UK on Monday.
His girlfriend Nicole Cooper, 24, is of the understanding the Home Office is deporting him now he is an adult, so she has launched a petition calling on the home secretary to reconsider.
The Home Office said it could not comment on individual cases.
Miss Cooper said her boyfriend fled Afghanistan aged 10 after his father was murdered by the Taliban and his mother sold their family's land to pay traffickers to bring him to the UK, where he was placed with a foster family in Cardiff.
Mr Naderi, a former pupil at Mary Immaculate Catholic School, is being held at Campsfield House, a detention centre in Oxfordshire.
Nicole Cooper has been with her boyfriend for two years
"He is devastated, upset, like a lost little boy. Not himself at all," Miss Cooper said.
"He has never had a family like he has at this moment. It's devastating everyone that he has to go through this.
"He has no links back home, he hasn't heard from anyone [since he left].
"We are just distraught... We are trying to stop the flight tomorrow to give us more time to fight his case."
The family plan to lodge a new appeal against his deportation at the Court of Appeal on Monday.
MPs Jo Stevens and Jenny Rathbone and musician Cerys Matthews are among those backing the petition.
Ms Stevens said: "I am in contact with the Home Office and hoping that both our legal and political representations will be sufficient to allow Bashir to remain in the UK in order to make a fresh application for leave to stay here.
"Bashir is a fully Westernised 19-year-old who has grown up in Cardiff, is at college here and has the support of a close network of people who are his Welsh family.
"His life will be in immediate danger if he is returned alone to Afghanistan. He has no family there, cannot speak the languages and the region is extremely unsafe because of ongoing conflict.
"Although time is short, I am hoping the Home Office will come to the conclusion that it would not be right to force Bashir on to the flight tomorrow afternoon."
Mr Naderi's solicitor Vinita Templeton added: "For someone who doesn't speak the language, who can't read the language, who doesn't have immediate contact with his [Afghan] family, he would be in a really vulnerable position."