The High Court has ordered the release of Moustafa Mohamed Aly Abbas from Cloverhill Prison after finding that the document relied on to justify his immigration detention contained materially incorrect information.
Abbas was subject to a deportation order. He attended the Garda National Immigration Bureau at Burgh Quay on September 8, 2015, where Sergeant James Doyle arrested him under section 5 of the Immigration Act 1999 and directed his detention at Store Street Garda Station pending removal from Ireland.
The following morning, Detective Garda Conor Boland took Abbas into custody for transfer to Dublin Airport. Gardaí attempted to place him on a flight, but the removal was abandoned after Abbas resisted deportation.
He was then taken to Cloverhill Prison. The document handed to the prison stated that Detective Garda Boland had arrested Abbas on September 9 and directed his detention because he had failed to comply with the deportation order and intended to avoid removal.
That account was not correct. The State accepted that Boland had not arrested Abbas on September 9. The original arrest had been made by Sergeant Doyle the previous day on stated statutory grounds.
Ms Justice Donnelly held that this mattered because the written notification provided to a prison must clearly identify the legal basis for depriving a person of liberty. The document wrongly identified both the arresting Garda and the date of arrest, and did not accurately record the statutory basis on which the original detention had begun.
The court did not decide a separate dispute over whether the Garda who arrests a person must personally deliver that person to the prescribed place of detention. It was unnecessary to resolve that issue because the defective documentation was enough to decide the case.
The judge stressed that the ruling was not criticism of the individual Gardaí and noted gaps in the legislation governing what should happen when a deportation attempt is frustrated.
Because the certified detention document did not demonstrate lawful jurisdiction on its face, Abbas was ordered released under Article 40.4.2 of the Constitution.