A man who has lived in the UK since childhood and was due to be deported on Saturday on a 6.55pm flight to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a country with one of the worst human rights records in the world, has been given an eleventh-hour stay of execution.

Habib Bazaboko, a stonemason, fled to the UK at the age of 11 after his father was murdered in his home country. He has previous convictions, including for grievous bodily harm, but has not committed any crime for nine years.

Speaking earlier in the day from Colnbrook immigration removal centre, where the Home Office detained him two weeks ago, he told the Guardian the prospect of returning to the DRC had him fearing for his life.

“I have no family in [the] DRC, I don’t speak the language, my life is here in the UK. I don’t know why they are forcing me to go back there. I’m so scared of what will happen to me I haven’t been able to sleep.”

He was taken to Heathrow in handcuffs on Saturday afternoon but the Home Office appears to have done a U-turn because when the time came to board the flight the escorts who accompanied him told him he would not be put on the plane and instead returned him to Harmondsworth immigration removal centre, which is next door to Colnbrook.

“My head is pounding, I don’t fully understand what is happening,” said Bazaboko, who has mental health problems. “The escorts told me I would be getting on the plane and then suddenly I wasn’t. I’m so relieved that I’m not on that plane but I don’t know what will happen next.”

The Home Office removes very few people to the DRC – there were just 46 forced removals in the past three years. But recently there has been an increase in attempts; this is at least the third case in just over a week where the Home Office has tried to deport someone to the country.

Foreign Office admits it doesn't know fate of DRC returnees Read more

Evidence of torture in the DRC has been widely documented. The Human Rights Watch 2019 world report noted serious human rights violations against opposition supporters, peaceful protesters and human rights activists. The charity Freedom from Torture has documented multiple accounts of torture in the DRC, including a high incidence of rape.

Home Office officials have been trying to persuade their Foreign Office (FCO) colleagues to say publicly that it is safe to return people to the DRC. Internal emails obtained by the human rights organisation Justice First, and seen by the Guardian, show Home Office officials requesting that their British embassy colleagues in Kinshasa issue a statement saying they have no information that people are being persecuted after returning from the UK to the DRC.

FCO officials replied that they did not monitor the treatment of returnees and did not have the resources to do so. They said that to investigate this properly they would need to speak to key officials in the DRC, at the airport in Kinshasa, other embassies, UNHCR, other human rights organisations and returnees, but that they were unable to do this.

Catherine Ramos, from Justice First, obtained the emails disclosed in a freedom of information response and has published a dossier of evidence including references to the emails and 18 cases where people have been deported from the UK to the DRC and suffered ill-treatment including imprisonment, torture and disappearance.

Bazaboko’s solicitor, Toufique Hossain from Duncan Lewis, welcomed the stay of execution and said that further evidence of the risk on return for Bazaboko would be urgently submitted to the Home Office.“We are very concerned that despite the new evidence of persecution of people returned to DRC the Home Office is continuing to try to remove people there,” he said.

A Home Office spokesperson said:“We only return those with no legal right to remain in the UK, including foreign national offenders and failed asylum seekers, where it is safe to do so. We carefully consider all asylum claims, including those made by foreign national offenders, on their individual merits and on the evidence available against available country information and relevant case law.

“Those found to be in need of protection are not expected to return to their country. Where a decision has been made that a person does not require international protection, removal is only enforced when we conclude that it is safe to do so, with a safe route of return.”

• This article was amended on 11 April 2019 to remove a sentence repeated earlier in the text.