O v Immigration appeal tribunal and Secretary of State for the Home Department
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 14 February 1995 |
| Date | 14 February 1995 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division |
Court of Appeal
Butler-Sloss, Simon Brown, Ward LJJ
A Riza QC and W Sherry for the applicant
R Jay for the respondents
Cases referred to in the judgments:
R v Secretary of State for the Home Department ex parte Baljit Singh [1994] Imm AR 42.
T v Secretary of State for the Home Department [1995] Imm AR 142.
R v Secretary of State for the Home Department ex parte O (unreported, QBD, 31 January 1995).
Political asylum dismissal of appeal adjudicator concluded medical evidence while consistent with account of ill-treatment did not necessarily support that account whether a proper finding applicant stockpiling arms for tribal insurrection likely prosecution whether applicant entitled to asylum. United Nations Convention relating to the status of refugees (1951), Protocol (1967) art. 1F(b).
Renewed application for leave to move for judicial review following refusal by Turner J. The applicant was a citizen of Ghana. He claimed to have been ill- treated while serving in the army. He had also been involved in the stockpiling of arms for an insurrection by the Ashanti tribe.
The adjudicator had found the applicant to have been of very low credibility. He had acknowledged that medical reports showed that the applicant's injuries were not inconsistent with the treatment he had claimed he had received, but also concluded that those reports did not show that the applicant's story was true. As to the stockpiling of arms, the adjudicator concluded that that conduct left the applicant open to legitimate prosecution but did not ground a claim for asylum on the basis of feared persecution.
Counsel argued that the adjudicator had failed to make a proper finding on the medical evidence. As to the stockpiling of arms, that was a serious political crime which qualified the applicant for asylum.
Held
1. The adjudicator had been entitled to come to the conclusions to which he had come as to the evidential value of the medical reports. He did not have to deal individually with each letter.
2. It was a fallacy to conclude that the Convention was designed to allow refugee status to anyone who chose by violent means to seek to overthrow or undermine the established government of their country.
3. It was not implicit in article 1F(b) that anyone who chose to commit a serious political crime was by that fact alone to be regarded as entitled to refugee status.
4. A person could not seek to achieve refugee status by breaching foreign laws and thus exposing himself to prosecution.
5. The proper approach was to determine whether an individual was in any event liable to persecution for a Convention reason and then to consider whether the commission of a serious non-political crime had put that individual outside the protection of the Convention.
6. In this instant case there was no evidence that the applicant had been or was liable to be persecuted.
Simon Brown LJ: The applicant is a 30-year-old citizen of Ghana, a refused asylum seeker. Before the court today is his renewed application for leave to challenge the decisions respectively of a special adjudicator, Mr Smith, on 28 December 1994, and of the Immigration Appeal Tribunal on 12 January, 1995. Leave was refused in the first instance by Turner J on 31 January 1995.
The short history is this. The applicant arrived in the United Kingdom on a false passport on 30 November 1992. Some six months later, on 25 May 1993, he claimed political asylum. That claim was refused by the Secretary of State on 16 March 1994.
The applicant appealed to the special adjudicator. That appeal was heard and dismissed by Mr Renton. Thereafter, however, further material came to light, including in particular a letter...
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