THE Nigerian woman who claims she paid criminals to smuggle her to Ireland via the Netherlands in order to save her daughters from female genital mutilation was issued with a holiday visa to enter Britain shortly before she arrived in Dublin.
Immigration officials do not believe that Pamela Izevbekhai was in fact smuggled to Ireland, but instead suspect that she travelled to Britain on a holiday visa before coming to Dublin to claim political asylum.
Immigration files and court documents in the case, which may yet be decided in Europe, reveal that the British government issued Izevbekhai, her husband Tony, and their two daughters, Naomi, 7, and Jemima, 6, with a multi-visit visa to enter Britain in June 2004.
The two-year visa was issued by the British embassy in Lagos, Nigeria, and allowed the family to travel to and from Britain for holidays.
Izevbekhai and her daughters presented themselves to immigration officials in Dublin in January 2005, claiming that a trafficker had smuggled them to Ireland via the Netherlands. She refused to disclose who had arranged her passage, and could not produce any travel documents.
Gardai suspect Izevbekhai travelled from London to Belfast and then crossed the border with her daughters. Immigration officials intercepted her husband, Tony, travelling in a taxi to Dublin from Belfast in August 2005, eight months later. He had documentation indicating a permanent address in Britain, according to one memo on the case. He is now in Nigeria, but was a regular visitor to Britain until recently.
Dutch immigration authorities say they have no evidence of Izevbekhai or her daughters passing through Schipol Airport in Amsterdam at the relevant times.
Yesterday the Nigerian declined a request for an interview but issued a statement through Antonia Leslie, a supporter, insisting that she had been smuggled to Ireland via Amsterdam and had never travelled to Britain. “Pamela was smuggled through Dublin Airport by a trafficker who used a false passport belonging to someone else,” Leslie said. “She was waved through an immigration checkpoint because one of her daughters was crying and she looked like the person whose passport she was using.”
Izevbekhai’s fight to remain in Ireland with her young daughters has generated significant publicity. She appeared as a guest on the Marian Finucane Show on RTE radio yesterday, saying she left Nigeria to prevent her husband’s family from performing female circumcision, or genital mutilation, on her daughters.
She said her first daughter, Elizabeth, had died at 17 months from blood loss which the attending doctor described as being possibly the result of circumcision.
The Department of Justice last week “suspended” her deportation on Tuesday following the intervention of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in her case. Izevbekhai lost a High Court appeal to prevent the deportation of herself and her two daughters on Tuesday, when she was told the ECHR had decided to consider her plight. The Strasbourg court is due to discuss the case in December.
The government ordered her return to Nigeria in November 2005 but Izevbekhai failed to report to the Garda National Immigration Bureau (GNIB) for deportation. She evaded arrest until January 2006 when she launched a legal appeal. She was released from custody until the case was heard.
She has denied using a visa to enter Britain, and claimed she left her passport in Nigeria. When asked by lawyers for the state why she had applied for a UK visa if she had not used it, she stated that the family had to explore all options for leaving Nigeria.