THE government has been accused of putting detainees through “torture,” preparing them for deportation today in defiance of a court order.

On Monday night the Home Office lost a ruling to deport 25 of the 50 detainees it had scheduled to put on a charter removal flight to Jamaica at 6.30am today.

But later that night it emerged that all the deportees, including those protected by the court order, were bundled into vans and sent to Doncaster Sheffield airport.

Movement for Justice activist Antonia Bright, who spoke to detainees and their families throughout the night, described scenes of panic, fear and confusion.

“The families, partners, mums, are freaking out because they are getting this partial news that they are not being taken on the flight but they are still being taken,” she explained.

Buses carrying the 25 detainees were eventually told to turn back at about 5am but the Home Office confirmed that 17 people were deported on the flight.

Ms Bright accused the Home Office of showing contempt for the court’s decision by “doing their best to get the people all the way up to the door of the plane … knowing there was an injunction against actually putting them on the plane.”

She said detainees were being told by guards on the buses that they had lost their appeal, a claim which was not true.

“This is really a form of torture: it’s seeking to put in someone’s mind a kind of fear that anything can happen.”

Campaigners expressed fears at the time that the Home Office was about to break the law in its bid to deport the detainees.

Detention Action director Bella Sankey tweeted: “We are speaking to individuals clearly covered by the Court of Appeal order prohibiting their deportation who have been removed to the airport and told they are being deported. Home Office, are you really going to try and break the law tonight?”

The legal action had been brought over fears those being held in detention centres in Heathrow may not have been given adequate access to legal advice because of problems with the phone signal. The judges’ decision applied to 25 men.

Several other separate legal challenges were being brought to court on individual cases. It is understood that eight people due on the flight are now having their cases reviewed.

The 25 were believed to have been taken to Morton Hall detention centre in Lincolnshire after spending 12 hours on the buses.

Ms Bright said the ordeal had caused “tremendous trauma” for both the detainees and their families.

Margaret Holmes was only told at 11am that her partner had been taken off the flight. She had last heard from Christopher at 1am when he called to tell her officials had come to take him to the vans.

She told the Star that she’d been awake all night, staring at the clock ticking closer to the 6.30am take-off.

“I took it in my heart that he was going,” she said. “I couldn’t sleep, all night I was holding the phone in my hand ringing up his numbers.

“Every time I looked at the clock all I could see was 6.30am. Then it was 8am, 9am, 10, and I was sure he was gone, otherwise he would have called. I just broke down and cried.”

On Monday Home Secretary Priti Patel had fled of the Commons just before an urgent question by Labour MP David Lammy on the flight.

Mr Lammy disputed Home Office claims that all those on board were “serious criminals,” stressing that many he had spoken to had served jail terms for one-off drug offences while others had been the victims of county-lines drug gangs.

The Home Office continued to stand by its position today. A spokesman said: “We make no apology whatsoever for seeking to remove dangerous foreign criminals.

“We will be urgently pursuing the removal of those who were prevented from boarding the flight due to a legal challenge over a mobile network failure.”