2006 Afghan hijackers case

The Afghan hijackers case refers to a series of United Kingdom judicial rulings in 2006 in which it was ruled a group of nine Afghan men, who had hijacked an aircraft to escape the Taliban, had the right to remain in the UK. The case provoked widespread political controversy and was questioned by large sections of the media, causing widespread condemnation by many newspapers (most notably The Sun), and the leaders of both the Labour Party and the Conservative Party. Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Tony Blair called the ruling "an abuse of common sense", while the Conservative Party leader David Cameron pledged to reform British human rights legislation to prevent a recurrence of such situations.

On 6 February 2000, a group of nine Afghan men led by brothers Ali Safi and Mohammed Safi fleeing the Taliban regime hijacked Ariana Afghan Airlines flight 805 a Boeing 727 aircraft registration YA-FAY with 180 passengers and seven crew. Flight 805 was a domestic flight from Kabul to Mazar-i-Sharif Airport. The hijackers forced the crew to fly to Stansted Airport in Essex, England after stopovers in Tashkent, Aktobe and Moscow. The siege of the aircraft lasted until 10 February. They were convicted of hijacking and false imprisonment in 2001 and sentenced to five years imprisonment, but their convictions were quashed by the Court of Appeal in 2003, because the trial judge's summing up made an error in law which might have misdirected the jury. The judge had advised that the defence of duress was only applicable if the defendants were under an actual objective threat, whereas the Court of Appeal ruled that in law the perception of a threat can be enough for the defendants to present duress as a defence.

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