Albanian authorities have confirmed that most of its citizens forcibly returned from the UK this year were convicted of crimes there. The BBC has spoken to those men sent home, and learnt that some prisoners were offered £1,500 to leave - and some plan to come back.
Each week, a small crowd gathers at the razor-wire fence around the back of Albania's Tirana airport, where UK deportation flights land. Deportation flights to Albania have increased since the country signed a joint co-operation agreement with the UK last December, to 'deter and disrupt illegal migration'. The Home Office says more than 1,000 people have been returned since then.
The BBC spoke to dozens of people on several of these deportation flights last month, and found that most came from UK prisons. Some had been offered money in return for agreeing to deportation, and were released from prison before serving their minimum sentence, under an existing scheme used for foreign offenders.
One cheerful 30-year-old man, who asked to remain anonymous, said he had been serving a six-year sentence for drug offences, and was released for deportation after serving just two of them - a year before he would have been eligible for parole. He was also offered £1,500 in financial support to return home, under a separate programme called the Facilitated Return Scheme (FRS).
A UK government document clearly states that the scheme is 'a financial incentive' offered to foreign prisoners 'on the proviso that they co-operate with deportation and waive their right to appeal against it'. Other prisoners we spoke to on the deportation flights last month had been given the same amount.
Several of those on the deportation flights said they were planning to return to the UK within weeks or even days, despite what many described as a new hard-line approach by police there. The Home Office said it did not publish statistics on how many Albanians had been deported under the Early Release Scheme or how many had received financial incentives.
