'If you're saying you left the country because it's unsafe and you're choosing to travel back there... it doesn't make sense'

THREE teenage Iranian asylum seekers went on holidays to their home country to visit family and enjoy watersports despite claiming to have fled because of persecution, whistleblowers have claimed.

- Zak Garner-Purkis

The trio of Kurdish-Iranians returned last year funded by another migrant, two housing workers allege.

But the two former employees of housing provider Framework claimed their concerns about the young men, who had all arrived in Britain by small boat, were "brushed aside".

Darren Jennings, 50, who was a housing officer, claims he was "made to feel like a racist" for flagging up the trips, which involved watersports and Eid celebrations.

But he said: "If you're saying you've left the country because it's unsafe and then you're choosing to travel back there it doesn't make sense."

During his monthly check-ups for an asylum-seeker accommodation facility, Mr Jennings was concerned when one resident failed to answer his door.

He claims the man had returned from the East Midlands to Iran to visit his family in April last year for around two months. This, Mr Jennings claims, prompted another Iranian resident to tell him of his own plans to go back.

The housing officer, who quit Framework last July, felt this represented a serious safeguarding issue, not least because they said the trips were being funded by another migrant seeking asylum in Britain, though he does not know who.

Mr Jennings said: "They were skint, on benefits, but were saying 'we've got the money' from some mysterious individual willing to pay for it. If my daughter came to me and said 'somebody I barely know can pay for me to go to Ibiza' I'm not letting her go. I'm certainly thinking there's something going on there.