R v Secretary of State for the Home Department, ex parte Abdi
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 20 April 1994 |
| Date | 20 April 1994 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division |
Queen's Bench Division
Before Mr Justice Sedley
Immigration - asylum - natural justice - asylum-seeker entitled to all relevant facts
Principles of natural justice entitled an asylum-seeker to disclosure by the Secretary of State for the Home Department not only of those facts relied on in support of his certificate that there was no foundation for the asylum-seeker's claim that his removal from the United Kingdom would be contrary to its obligations under the Geneva Convention 1951 but also of any factual material pointing in the opposite direction.
Nor could the secretary of state rationally issue such certificate where his conclusion that it was safe to return the asylum-seeker to a third country was based only on an assessment of the number of applications which that country had accepted for consideration without any comparative assessment of the numbers of asylum applications declined for substantive consideration by that country, together with the reasons for such.
Mr Justice Sedley so held in a reserved judgment in the Queen's Bench Division when granting the applications of Khalif Mohamed Abdi and Abdifatah Abduleh Gawe for orders of certiorari quashing (i) certificates issued by the Home Secretary on December 2, 1993 under paragraph 5 of Schedule 2 to the Asylum and Immigration Appeals Act 1993 to the effect that each applicant's claim that his removal to Spain would be contrary to the UK's obligations under the Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees (1951) (Cmd 9171) and (1967) (Cmd 3906) was without foundation and (ii) the dismissal on January 5, 1994 in the case of Mr Abdi and on January 12 in the case of Mr Gawe by special adjudicators of appeals against the decision by the Home Secretary to refuse them leave to enter the UK.
Miss Christa Fielden for the applicants; Mr Ian Ashford-Thom for the Home Secretary.
MR JUSTICE SEDLEY said that the applicants were Muslim Somalis who had come to this country via Spain. Each had sought asylum on arrival on November 25, 1993.
The secretary of state, satisfied that Spain was a safe country to which the applicants could be sent in accordance with paragraph 180K of the Statement of Changes in Immigration Rules (HC 251), had not considered their applications substantively and had proposed to return the applicants to Spain.
The applicants had...
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