RS (Sri Lanka) v The Secretary of State for the Home Department
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Sir Patrick Elias |
| Judgment Date | 17 January 2019 |
| Neutral Citation | [2019] EWCA Civ 443 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
| Docket Number | Case No: C5/2015/0972 |
| Date | 17 January 2019 |
[2019] EWCA Civ 443
In The Court Of Appeal (civil Division)
ON APPEAL FROM THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
(IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER)
The Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
Sir Patrick Elias
Case No: C5/2015/0972
Miss Charlotte Bayati (instructed by Birnberg Peirce, LONDON NW1 7HJ) appeared on behalf of the Applicant
THE RESPONDENT DID NOT APPEAR AND WAS NOT REPRESENTED
This is a renewed application for permission to appeal the decision of the Upper Tribunal. This case has a somewhat chequered history. It is an asylum case which was heard first by the First-Tier Tribunal on 22 August 2014 when the claim failed. It was then heard by the Upper Tribunal on 20 January 2015, permission having been granted by another judge in the First-Tier Tribunal. The Upper Tribunal dismissed the appeal, and an application was made for permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal after the Upper Tribunal had refused permission. There were four grounds originally spelled out. The application was rejected on paper, but it then came before the Senior President of Tribunals at an oral hearing. At that stage there was a case upon its way to the Supreme Court, MP v SSHD [2016] UKSC 32, and it was thought, it now appears erroneously, that the outcome of that case may be relevant to the appeal. Accordingly, the Senior President stayed the proceedings and ordered that no further steps should be taken until the matter had been resolved in one way or another. More recently, it has been recognised that there had been a misunderstanding of precisely what the Supreme Court was going to determine and that the stay should be lifted, and so it was. I now have to consider the permission application on a renewed hearing. It is unsatisfactory that it is now four years after the decision in the Upper Tribunal and almost five years since the decision in the First-Tier Tribunal. But that is where we are.
The facts, briefly, are these. The applicant was a member of the LTTE from 1995 until 2009. During the course of the civil war in Sri Lanka, he worked in the finance division and undertook vehicle maintenance. The work involved sending food, weapons and supplies through vehicles and arranging transport within the LTTE, picking up damaged vehicles, maintaining them, and making armoured trucks for the LTTE. He also helped injured civilians by taking them to medical centres for treatment.
He was detained in 2009, a month after the ceasefire had been entered into. He was severely tortured. It was accepted also by the First-Tier Tribunal that he had escaped from detention in December 2010. He then remained in hiding until mid-2012 when he fled from Sri Lanka with the help of an agent on a false passport. Originally, he went to Mumbai and then came on to the United Kingdom.
The country guidance in relation to Sri Lanka was set out in the case of GJ (Sri Lanka) v SSHD [2013] UKUT 219. In that guidance the Upper Tribunal set out the categories of persons at risk of persecution or serious harm on return to Sri Lanka. They set out four categories, two of which are...
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