Gardi v Secretary of State for the Home Department (No 2)

JurisdictionEngland & Wales
JudgeLORD JUSTICE WARD,Lord Justice Keene,LORD JUSTICE KEENE
Judgment Date22 October 2002
Neutral Citation[2002] EWCA Civ 1560
CourtCourt of Appeal (Civil Division)
Date22 October 2002
Azad Gardi
Appellant
and
Secretary of State for the Home Department
Respondent

[2002] EWCA Civ 1560

Before

Lord Justice Ward and

Lord Justice Keene

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE C/2002/0193

COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)

ON APPEAL FROM THE IMMIGRATION APPEAL TRIBUNAL

Royal Courts of Justice

Strand

London WC2

The Appellant did not appear and was not represented.

The Respondent did not appear and was not represented.

LORD JUSTICE WARD
1

Our unhappy and embarrassing task today is to declare the order made by this Court on 24th May 2002 to be a nullity.

2

What has led to this fiasco is this. The appellant, Mr Azad Gardi, was one of nine Iraqi nationals, ethnically Kurds, who fled from the northern part of Iraq within the Kurdish Autonomous Region, an area which borders on Iran, Turkey and, to a limited extent, Syria. Each claimed asylum. Various adjudicators granted those applications because, although (certainly in Mr Gardi's case) they had not established a well-founded fear of persecution within the Kurdish Autonomous Zone, nevertheless those persons could not be returned directly to their home area in the north, but only via Baghdad, where Mr Saddam Hussain was hardly likely to greet them with open arms and where, in that part of Iraq, they would probably have a well-founded fear of persecution.

3

The Secretary of State appealed and the nine cases were then heard together by the Immigration Appeal Tribunal. Those appeals were successful and the asylum-seekers sought permission to appeal further. All of the appeals raised the same interesting and novel point about the meaning of "refugee" within the Convention definition. Mr Gardi's case was chosen as the lead case to test the law, upon the answer to which many other cases depended, and many others were stacking up in the system. The Immigration Appeal Tribunal granted that permission.

4

On 24th May 2002 we dismissed Mr Gardi's appeal on that point. The erudite judgment of my Lord, Lord Justice Keene, has now been reported at [2002] 1 WLR 2755; so the law reporters will need to publish some note of this further decision of the Court.

5

Now I come to the embarrassing twist in the tail. In the eminently sensible attempt to collect a group of cases...

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17 cases
  • John Butland v Powys County Council
    • United Kingdom
    • Queen's Bench Division (Administrative Court)
    • February 4, 2009
    ...this appeal, and Keene LJ has wasted his learning on desert air”: Gardi v Secretary of State for the Home Department (No 2) (Note) [2002] EWCA Civ 1560, [2002] 1 WLR 3282, at para [6]. Subsequently a point dealt with obiter by Keene LJ in his judgment in Gardi v Secretary of State for the ......
  • J1 v The Secretary of State for the Home Department
    • United Kingdom
    • Court of Appeal (Civil Division)
    • March 27, 2013
    ...necessary formally to distinguish the Gardi case since the decision was made without jurisdiction as the court later recognised: see [2002 ] 1 WLR 3282. It was a case emanating from a Scottish adjudicator and the appeal should have been heard in the Court of Session rather than the Court o......
  • Secretary of State for the Home Department v Lisa Smith
    • United Kingdom
    • Court of Appeal (Civil Division)
    • November 2, 2022
    ...to this decision in a judicial review case there are the authorities where the position is governed by statute. In Gardi v Secretary of State for the Home Department (No. 2) [2002] 1 WLR 3282 this court had to set aside a judgment it had previously given ( [2002] 1 WLR 2755) on an appeal ......
  • GH v Secretary of State for the Home Department
    • United Kingdom
    • Immigration Appeals Tribunal
    • September 10, 2004
    ...was subsequently declared a nullity by the Court of Appeal for want of jurisdiction ( Gardi v SSHD (no 2) (Declaration of Nullity) [2002] EWCA Civ 1560) but the argument was again run before the Court of Session in Scotland in Saber v SSHD [2004] INLR 222. In that case neither the findings......
  • Request a trial to view additional results

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