Aland Salimi says Iraqi police beat and starved him after he was deported from Britain following failed asylum application

An Iranian who was mistakenly deported to Baghdad from the UK claims he endured beatings and starvation at the hands of Iraqi police officers.

The alleged mistreatment of Aland Salimi, 21, has emerged as the European court of human rights this week considers whether it is safe to resume deporting failed Iraqi asylum seekers to the Iraqi capital.

Deportations to Baghdad by the UK Border Agency (UKBA) have in effect been suspended until 24 November because of an upsurge in violence and attacks on Christian churches.

The office of the UN high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR) has also raised concerns about the conditions under which unsuccessful asylum seekers are forcibly returned to the Middle East.

The case of Salimi, an Iranian Kurd who came to Britain in 2007, illustrates the difficulties facing the immigration services. The UKBA says he consistently described himself as Iraqi during his application for asylum in the UK, in the hope of strengthening his chances of being accepted.

When Salimi was rejected and moves began to deport him to Baghdad, he started protesting that he was an Iranian, said the UKBA.

A letter was written to the immigration minister, Damian Green, pointing out his real nationality, but the fact that he had been through a screening interview by Iraqi officials in the UK and accepted by them to be Iraqi may have sealed his fate. On 6 September he was put on a flight with around 60 other failed asylum seekers.

"When we arrived at Baghdad airport, the Kurdish people did not want to be taken off the plane," Salimi told the Guardian. "The Iraqi police came on and shouted. They beat us with sticks. I told them I was Iranian. They didn't listen to me … The Iraqi police took me in a car to a prison and they started beating me again.

"They didn't give me food and they took the money in my pockets. I had no food or water for 24 hours. They said that Kurdish people 'make problems' and they would send me to Iran where Ahmadinejad [the Iranian president] would kill me. They were laughing. They also swore at me, shouted and threatened to hang me. They were Shia officers, while I'm Kurdish and a Sunni Muslim."

Salimi's solicitor in Cardiff, Sara Changkee, took a more detailed statement through a translator. "Aland says that when the Iraqi immigration officials came on to the plane he had squashed himself down [below the seats]," she said. "But they beat him with large wooden sticks and he became unconscious. He was taken to prison and beaten every day. Food and fluids were withheld. Somewhere along the line, the British embassy in Baghdad became involved." It then arranged to have Salimi flown back to the UK.

Dashty Jamal, of the International Federation of Iraqi Refugees, said the case showed that it was not safe to return failed asylum seekers to Baghdad. "European governments want to send people back to a war zone," he said.

The Iraqi embassy in London did not respond to inquires about the case. The Foreign Office, which returned Salimi to the UK, said in a letter to the European court that he described his experience in Baghdad as "torture". A second man, also wrongly deported to Iraq on 6 September and flown back to Britain at the same time, is thought to have been a Palestinian.

Asked why Salimi, an Iranian, had been sent to Iraq, Matthew Coats, head of immigration at the UKBA, said: "No documentary evidence has been submitted to the UK Border Agency to support his claim to be an Iranian national and an Iraqi ID card was submitted with his original claim.

"Only at the point of his detention in order to facilitate his removal from the United Kingdom did [Salimi] claim to be an Iranian national. He had asserted from his first encounter with the UK Border Agency that he was Kurdish and originated from the Dukan area of Sulaymania in northern Iraq. He maintained his claim to be an Iraqi national throughout the appeal process, most recently at an appeal hearing before an immigration judge earlier this year, which was dismissed."

Asked about reports of violence on the plane, Coats said: "The UK Border Agency continues to look into these allegations. Senior UK Border Agency officials on the flight did not witness any mistreatment by escorting staff or Iraqi officials. We take any allegations of mistreatment of returnees by UK Border Agency staff, their representatives, or receiving authorities, extremely seriously and they are thoroughly investigated."