Asylum seeker who was run over had claimed he was a child, inquest hears

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, an inquest has heard.

Amir Safi, who claimed before he died to be aged 16, was seen by a witness “ambling” up an M1 slip road in Nottinghamshire before he was found with multiple bone fractures and a brain injury on April 28 last year.

He died a week later from his injuries after being taken to Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham.

Derbyshire coroner Susan Evans recorded the conclusion as a road traffic collision at Derby Coroner’s Court on Tuesday.

She said: “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.”

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.

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”.

Amir had lived at the Novotel hotel in Long Eaton, Nottinghamshire – which was housing adult asylum seekers – for five months and had arrived in the UK from France on a small boat in October 2022, the court was told.

Jessica Anderson, who was a social worker for Nottinghamshire County Council, carried out an age assessment of Amir the day before he was fatally injured because he claimed to be a child.

She told the inquest: “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 be aged 11 in his ID photograph, but she did not believe him and thought he was older than he said.

“I informed him that the outcome was that I did not believe him and we would not move him from the hotel.”

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

“He was very quiet and withdrawn. He had his head down and said ‘OK’.

“I did not observe anything out of the ordinary for someone who had just received that outcome.”

The social worker said she had “no doubt” about the decision at the time, but agreed that age assessments can be wrong.

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

His statement, read to court by Ms Evans, said: “He lay in his bed and wrapped his blanket around him – he seemed very sad. Amir was very low and would not talk after that.”

Ms Evans said she did not have reliable evidence about Amir’s date of birth and recorded it as “unknown”.

The court heard that Amir told the Home Office during an assessment that he 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 to the UK after travelling by car and foot for more than a year to Iran and Turkey from his home country Afghanistan, the inquest was told.

The court heard that Amir left the hotel at around 4.21am on April 28 and that the limited street lighting and his dark clothing meant drivers would not have seen him and he may have been struck by multiple vehicles on the slip road.

Ms Evans told the inquest: “This short form conclusion is termed to avoid the term ‘accident’ where the intention of Amir, being on the road, is unknown from the evidence before me.

“I would like to say to Amir’s family how sorry I am about the loss of Amir. To lose him so far from home must be extraordinarily difficult.”