LZ (Zimbabwe) v Secretary of State for The Home Department
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Lord Justice Rix |
| Judgment Date | 18 April 2011 |
| Neutral Citation | [2011] EWCA Civ 1296 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
| Date | 18 April 2011 |
| Docket Number | Case No: C5/2011/0058 |
[2011] EWCA Civ 1296
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
(IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER)
[APPEAL No: AA/01235/2010]
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
Lord Justice Rix
Case No: C5/2011/0058
The Appellant did not appear and was not represented.
The Respondent did not appear and was not represented.
(As Approved by the Court
This is a renewed application for permission to appeal brought by the applicant, Ms LZ of Zimbabwe, in her appeal proceedings against the Secretary of State for the Home Department. The applicant, who wanted to be here this morning, has been detained by difficulties in Birmingham but I have had a message passed to her that I was minded to give permission to appeal and that her presence therefore was not necessary this morning. I hope I have been able to save her the journey.
The applicant was born in Zimbabwe and is now about 30. She came to the United Kingdom on 21 September 2001 as a visitor for two months. She stayed. In August 2002 she married a French or at any rate EU citizen, although that marriage did not survive. As a result of that marriage she was granted a temporary EU residence permit until November 2007. Within two months of her marriage she had met a man called Sibanda and, following what was a brief and (he says) secret affair, a child was born to her by Sibanda nine months later in July 2003.
In September 2003 she took her baby to Zimbabwe and left him with her mother. At some later time the care of the child passed to Sibanda's family. In September 2004 she was sentenced to four months and one week's imprisonment on a charge of deception. On 21 September 2009 she applied for a further EU residence permit but that was refused and her appeal was dismissed on 1 December 2009. It was only then that she applied for asylum, on 16 December 2009. In June 2009 she had started dating another man, called Dambaza, and had cohabited with him from September 2009, a relationship which she relied on in these proceedings as family life which the refusal of asylum would interfere with.
In the first decision of Immigration Judge Hague on 24 February 2010 her asylum and Article 8 claim was rejected. She was found to have poor credibility. Her evidence had to be treated, said Immigration Judge Hague, with the greatest caution and he considered that her evidence did not discharge even the comparatively slight burden of proof needed pursuant to the then country guidance decision in fldheader RN (Zimbabwe) CG [2008] UKAIT 00083. Immigration Judge Hague considered her not to be at risk. She had no political activity in Zimbabwe. Her mother had declared support for the Zanu PF party, albeit unwillingly. The father had died in 1999. Although she relied on a number of factors as increasing her risk profile such as her relationship with Sibanda, who was well known in Zimbabwe as a journalist opposed to the regime who had subsequently come to Britain and obtained asylum here, the Immigration Judge found that her relationship with him was brief and unknown and that a newspaper article which on the face of things appeared to have been published in Zimbabwe in 2005 and in which Sibanda's relationship with her was publicised, was not credited. That newspaper article, referred to in evidence given by Mr Sibanda at the hearing, was not produced at the hearing and the judge did not accept that it existed.
Another fact relied on was that it was said that her mother had briefly cohabited with an MDC...
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