The Queen (Lord Carlile of Berriew & others) v Secretary of State for the Home Department
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Lord Justice Stanley Burnton,Mr Justice Underhill |
| Judgment Date | 16 March 2012 |
| Neutral Citation | [2012] EWHC 617 (Admin) |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division (Administrative Court) |
| Docket Number | Case No: CO/4027/2011 |
| Date | 16 March 2012 |
[2012] EWHC 617 (Admin)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
DIVISIONAL COURT
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
Lord Justice Stanley Burnton
Mr Justice Underhill
Case No: CO/4027/2011
Claire Montgomery QC & Raza Husain QC (instructed by Mishcon de Reya) for the Claimants
James Eadie QC and Robert Palmer (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) for the Defendant
Hearing date: 23 rd February 2012
Introduction
The original Claimants in these proceedings are 16 eminent cross-party members of the House of Lords and the House of Commons who have invited Mrs Maryam Rajavi, an eminent dissident Iranian politician, resident in Paris, to meet with them in the Palace of Westminster to discuss, at an invitation only event, democracy, respect for human rights and other policy issues relating to Iran. Mrs Rajavi has been added to the claim as Seventeenth Claimant. Their wish to meet in Westminster, indeed in this country, has been thwarted as a result of the Secretary of State's decisions to exclude Mrs Rajavi from the UK. The Secretary of State claims that Mrs Rajavi's exclusion is conducive to the public good.
In these proceedings the Claimants contend that the Secretary of State's exclusion of Mrs Rajavi is unlawful, as an unjustified and perverse infringement of their common law and Convention right of free expression, rights that are all the more important and precious where those involved are members of the legislature.
The facts: (a) the context
This case is unusual, perhaps unique. Unlike in other cases of exclusion, the Secretary of State has no quarrel whatsoever with Mrs Rajavi's views nor with what she may or may not say whilst here. Her democratic credentials are not in dispute. She is recognised internationally as an expert on Iranian political affairs and the position of women in Islam. She has visited the UK on four occasions, without any consequences to British interests, is widely travelled and welcomed across many European states. She has visited the European Parliament more than a dozen times, most recently in February 2012.
The case is rendered all the more unusual by the poor state of relations between this country and Iran. In November last year the Government severed all financial ties with Iran. There were press reports of the possibility of military action in Iran. Following the attack on the British Embassy in Tehran, which seemed to have been officially sponsored, the Government withdrew all British Embassy staff from Tehran and closed the Iranian Embassy in London, leaving diplomatic relations at the "lowest possible level".
It appears that this country is the only member state of the European Union from which Mrs Rajavi is excluded. The basis of exclusion is the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's apprehension or fear of unlawful reprisals by the government of Iran if her exclusion is lifted and she addresses a meeting in the Palace of Westminster. The Parliamentary Claimants regard the Secretary of State's decision as the appeasement of an undemocratic regime in the face of apprehended threats of unlawful action. Their challenge has attracted the support of 180 of the most senior MPs and peers, including former party leaders, Ministers and Secretaries of State, with expertise in both foreign policy and security matters. Lord Carlile, the first named Claimant, considers the Secretary of State's decision to be an "affront to Parliament".
(b) Mrs Rajavi
Mrs Rajavi was originally excluded from the United Kingdom in 1997 on the grounds of her leadership of a terrorist organisation. She was and remains the de facto leader of the People's Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI), which is widely and correctly known by the Farsi name 'Mujahedin-e Khalq' (MeK) or 'Mujahedin-e Khalq Organisation' (MKO). I shall refer to it as the MeK. Mrs Rajavi had become co-Chair with her husband, Masoud Rajavi, in 1985. She was Secretary-General of the MeK from 1989 to 1993. She has also been "President-elect" of the National Council for the Resistance of Iran (NCRI) since 1993. The NCRI was founded as a movement broader than the MeK, but became and remains dominated by the MeK. Some observers, including for example the US Government, treat the two as aliases.
From the early 1980s until 2001 or 2002, the MeK carried out violent activities directed against Iran, from 1986 principally from their base in Iraq 60 miles north of Baghdad (Camp Ashraf). The group had participated in the 1979 Islamic Revolution that replaced the Shah with a Shiite Islamist regime led by Ayatollah Khomeini. However, the MeK's ideology, described by the US State Department Country Report on Terrorism 2010 as "a blend of Marxism, feminism, and Islamism", was at odds with the post-revolutionary government and most of its original leadership was soon executed by the Khomeini regime. In 1981, its leadership and some members fled Iran. The leadership resettled in Paris, where they began supporting Iraq in its war against Iran. In 1986, after France recognized the Iranian regime, the MeK moved its headquarters to Iraq. This facilitated its terrorist activities in Iran. The activities of MeK led it to become a proscribed organisation in the United Kingdom on 29 March 2001, under the Terrorism Act 2000.
On 30 November 2007, the Proscribed Organisation Appeals Commission (POAC) allowed an appeal brought by Lord Alton of Liverpool and others against the Secretary of State's refusal to de-proscribe the MeK. POAC found that the MeK had been a terrorist organisation. At paragraph 164 of its open determination, it stated:
"We have reached the clear conclusion that the Secretary of State had reasonable grounds for believing that the PMOI was responsible for the attacks listed and, more importantly, to conclude that the PMOI had carried out many attacks over an extended period of time and that the examples set out in Mr Fender's witness statement demonstrated the range and severity of the terrorist activities in which the PMOI had historically been involved."
However, POAC found that there had been a significant change in the MeK's activities dating from June 2001 onwards, and that the MeK could no longer be said to be concerned with terrorism within the meaning of section 3 of the Terrorism Act.
Mrs Rajavi is described by Mr Alejo Vidal-Quadras, a Vice-President of the European Parliament, as "the leading expert on Iranian affairs". She is a powerful advocate for a democratic non-sectarian government for Iran: hence the undoubted hostility to her of the present Iranian government. Mr Vidal-Quadras says of her that "She represents the rights of the oppressed in Iran, from women and students, to ethnic and religious minorities. Moreover, her modern and progressive interpretation of Islam is an important and necessary example to others. …. I found Mrs Rajavi to be a true believer of gender equality and freedom of thought and religion, committed to the rule of law and a very responsible leader. She has done much to promote religious tolerance. …" He gives the dates of Mrs Rajavi's dozen meetings at the European Parliament, and comments as follows:
"13. Every time she had visited the European Parliament she has addressed various meetings including official meetings of Parliamentary groups, as well as many private meetings with heads of parliamentary groups, committee chairs, women's groups and other individual members interested in foreign policy, human rights and global peace and security. If Mrs Rajavi was restricted from visiting the European Parliament, she would have had the opportunity to meet with a handful of MEPs who travelled to Paris to see her, whereas by having the opportunity to visit the European Parliament, she has had the opportunity to meet and engage with hundreds of MEPs.
14. MEPs always take advantage of her presence at the European Parliament to actively participate in her meetings to learn about all sorts of issues regarding the situation in Iran, the state of the regime and policy towards it, and advances made by the Iranian opposition. Participants normally include a number of Vice Presidents of the European Parliament and leaders of parliamentary groups and committees. Face to face meetings allow MEPs and their advisers to question Mrs Rajavi and spend time with her addressing a range of sensitive issues. They could not possibly do this through other means of long distance communication. At a conference on the occasion of International Women's Day at the European Parliament dozens of female MEPs attended including female Vice President of the Parliament and a large number of members of EP committee on women."
(c) The Secretary of State's decisions
The decisions of the Secretary of State that are the subject of these proceedings were dated 1 February 2011, 10 October 2011 and 24 January 2012: i.e., they postdate the de-proscription of the PMOI. Each of these decisions was made by the Home Secretary personally, although clearly they were made on the advice of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The decision of 1 February 2011 was unreasoned: the Secretary of State simply stated that she did not consider Mrs Rajavi's presence in the UK to be conducive to the public good. The decision of 10 October 2011, on the other hand, was fully reasoned. It was made after the bringing of these proceedings, and after consideration by the Secretary of State of the Claimants' evidence. It is worth setting out the reasons...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
The Queen (Lord Carlile of Berriew & others) v Secretary of State for the Home Department
...HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION DIVISIONAL COURT The Rt. Lord Justice Stanley Burnton and The Hon. Mr Justice Underhill [2012] EWHC 617 (Admin) Royal Courts of Justice Strand, London, WC2A 2LL Lady Justice Arden Lord Justice Patten and Lord Justice Mccombe Case No: C4/2012/0943......
-
R (on the application of Lord Carlile of Berriew QC) v Secretary of State for the Home Department
...would not have been possible through long distance communication means. 131 Before the Divisional Court ( R (Lord Carlile of Berriew QC) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2012] EWHC 617 (Admin)– Stanley Burnton LJ and Underhill J) the Secretary of State accepted that there had ......
-
R FH (Iran) v The Secretary of State for the Home Department
... ... (Admin) IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION ADMINISTRATIVE COURT Royal ... SSHD [2011] UKSC 12 ... Lord Dyson referred to the non-exhaustive list of factors that ... January 2012, before the Divisional Court, in Lord Carlile of Berriew CBE QC v SSHD [2012] EWHC 617 (Admin), a ... ...
-
Upper Tribunal (Immigration and asylum chamber), 2015-09-04, OA/03709/2014
...(SIAC case involving allegations of links of Islamic extremists) 6 Lord Carlile & Ors v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2012] EWHC 617 (Admin) (exclusion of Iranian dissident on the grounds that Iran may take retribution if the ban was 7 R v IAT (ex parte Ajaib Singh) [1978] Imm......
-
SINGAPORE ACADEMY OF LAW ANNUAL LECTURE 2013 —“THE RULE OF LAW AS A MANY COLOURED DREAM COAT”
...UKPC 4. 81 Re Hammel's Application (2008) NIQB 73. 82 R (Corner House Research) v Director of Serious Fraud Office [2009] 1 AC 756. 83 [2012] EWHC 617. 84 (2012) 86 ALJR 1168, referring to Maxwell v The Queen(1996) 104 CLR 501 at 534....