R SELVARATNAM SWEENDRAN v Immigration Appeal Tribunal
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | MR JUSTICE SILBER |
| Judgment Date | 25 February 2002 |
| Neutral Citation | [2002] EWHC 650 (Admin) |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division (Administrative Court) |
| Date | 25 February 2002 |
| Docket Number | CO/4780/2001 |
[2002] EWHC 650 (Admin)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
(THE ADMINISTRATIVE COURT)
Mr Justice Silber
CO/4780/2001
MR S COX (instructed by Van-Arkadie & Co, Middlesex HA0 2DB) appeared on behalf of the Appellant.
MR A SHARLAND (instructed by The Treasury Solicitor, London SW1H 9JS) appeared on behalf of the Secretary of State for the Home Department, the Interested Party.
Monday, 25th February 2002
The claimant seeks permission to judicially review a decision of the Immigration Appeal Tribunal refusing leave to the claimant to appeal from a determination, dated 19th June 2001, of a special adjudicator. He had dismissed an appeal by the claimant against a decision of the Secretary of State for the Home Department, "the Interested Party" on this application refusing the claimant's application for asylum. Turner J refused permission on paper and therefore this is a renewed application.
The claimant is a Sri Lankan Tamil. According to the claimant, the central feature of his case was that after he and his mother went to stay in Colombo, he was detained and tortured as a suspected spy of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam ("the LTTE"). This detention and suspicion was according to the claimant, reported in detailed and hostile terms in contemporary Colombo newspapers, and in particular, in an article in the Thinakaran, the Tamil Daily Newspaper, to which I will have to return.
The case for the claimant was that after this report had been published he and his mother went to live in LTTE controlled territory and when the Sir Lankan army advanced, he fled Sri Lanka for fear of being detained and tortured.
The special adjudicator, like the Secretary of State in his refusal letter, disbelieved the claimant and dismissed the appeal and the Immigration Appeal Tribunal refused leave to appeal.
The claimant has a single point, which is that the adjudicator had no regard at all to a newspaper article which it is said that he did not mention in his determination. The translation of the article, which was before the special adjudicator, states this:
"The Security Force had arrested the mother and brother of the former LTTE leader at Vavuniya Pirabha alias Selvaratnam Selvakumar from a house in the suburb of Colombo. Mr Selvakumar was killed by the Security Force at Vavuniya last year on 22nd November.
Mr Selvakumar's mother and brother are people without any income. But it was revealed as a result of investigation that they had been living in a house bought for Rs.550,000. The Security Force exposed that they were spy for tigers according to their income particulars.
A lady captured at Vavuniya confirmed the fact that the person Selvakumar who was killed was her son and his lover Devi who was killed during the displacement in November.
She said that they were residents of Mullaitivu, and they went to India after Selvakumar was killed, and afterwards they came back from India and lived in the surrounding of Colombo for the past three months.
The Security Forces are of the opinion that they can collect further information by carrying out more investigation from the two suspects."
Mr Cox, who now appears for the claimant, did not represent the claimant in front of the special adjudicator, but a letter has been obtained from Mr Franco, counsel who did appear for the claimant on that occasion. He confirms that the article was adduced in evidence at the appeal hearing before the special adjudicator and that the claimant was cross-examined by the respondent as to the date of the article. Mr Franco also confirms that he made a submission to the special adjudicator to the effect that the newspaper article corroborated the averments made by the claimant relating to the death of his brother and the circumstances of his own case.
It seems clear from the determination of the special adjudicator that the claimant produced the article on the day of the hearing. At paragraph 4 of his determination, the special adjudicator refers to the documentary evidence before him which includes "various newspaper cuttings". Later in his determination at paragraph 10, the adjudicator stated that he had taken into account the submissions of Mr Franco for the claimant in reaching his determination. Those submissions would, of course, have included those made about the corroborative effect of the article, to which I have already referred. The special adjudicator also stated in that paragraph that he had a full note of the submissions in the record of proceedings which he had maintained.
The thrust of Mr Cox's contentions on the present application for permission is first that the newspaper article was valuable corroboration of the claimant's account, and that the adjudicator's failure to have regard to it fatally flawed his assessment of credibility. His second complaint is that the Tribunal's attitude was to focus on credibility and not appreciate his complaint that the article had been ignored. It is clear that the adjudicator considered the issue of the claimant's credibility at some length starting in paragraph 14 of his determination.
The claimant had given evidence in front of the special adjudicator and had been cross-examined. The special adjudicator noted that the letter of refusal from the Secretary of State set out a large number of matters relating to the claimant's credibility and which led him to conclude that contrary to the claimant's evidence, he had not been arrested, detained and ill-treated as had been claimed...
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