Afghan asylum seeker died in M1 crash ‘after social worker did not believe he was a child’
A young asylum seeker from Afghanistan 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 to be 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 28 April last year.
He died a week later from his injuries after being taken to Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham.
The 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.”
Safi arrived in the UK on a small boat in October 2022 and claimed asylum a few days later. Home Office records suggest he was born in 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”.
Speaking from Afghanistan on Tuesday his family disputed the age on his Home Office record and told the Guardian he was a child at the time of his death.
The court heard that Safi was sent to an asylum seeker hotel for adults in Long Eaton, just off the M1 between Nottingham and Derby, after arriving in the UK from France on a small boat in October 2022.
Jessica Anderson, who was a social worker for Nottinghamshire county council, carried out an age assessment the day before Safi was fatally injured.
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.”
Anderson said he seemed “upset” and “disappointed” with the result, which he had called an “injustice” at the meeting.
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“He was very quiet and withdrawn.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.
According to his roommate Rahman Hodack, whose statement was read out at the inquest, after Safi received the news from the social worker he lay on his bed wrapped in a blanket and told Hodack that his age had not been accepted.
“He was very low and would not talk. I thought he seemed hopeless and helpless,” Hodack said in his statement. Safi declined Hodack’s offer to join him and his friends for dinner in the hotel dining room and was asleep when Hodack returned to their shared room at about 1am. When he woke up the next morning Safi was not in his bed. He was found on the slip road of the M1 with severe injuries at around 5am and died of these injuries on 5 May 2023.
Speaking from Afghanistan his family said: “We were shocked and saddened that Amir then died the way that he did. He was telling the truth, he was a child and should have been treated like one.”