Aso and Baran fled Iran, crossed the Channel together and were both returned to France. After risking their lives to reach Britain again, the friends found themselves facing very different fates
At the end of last year, two men fled Iran. Aso and Baran* were strangers at the time. The way their stories would cross, then diverge, reveals the cruel arbitrariness of the UK asylum system in general, and the government’s controversial one in, one out scheme in particular.
Before he left Iran, Aso, 28, had converted from Islam to Christianity, putting his life in imminent danger. “I had to keep my conversion to Christianity a secret,” he says. “I knew if I was caught, I risked being executed by the Iranian regime … one of my relatives, who I trusted, paid smugglers to get me out last November.”