The High Court has refused an application for judicial review challenging the Minister for Justice and Equality’s refusal to revoke a deportation order against a Bangladeshi man. It also rejected his renewed request for an interim injunction preventing deportation while judgment was reserved.
The applicant sought to have the minister’s decision quashed and his application for revocation reconsidered. He argued that the minister had misunderstood the timeline of his account, placed unreasonable weight on information about political conditions in Bangladesh, considered irrelevant matters about his political motives, and wrongly concluded that he had withheld information over time.
The man said he had been an active member of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and had fled after police raided a party meeting at his home in March 2008. He acknowledged travelling to the UK from November 2007 to March 2008, but argued that he had returned to Bangladesh before the alleged meeting. He said the UK trips did not rationally undermine his account of the meeting or his reason for leaving Bangladesh.
The minister’s position was that the undisclosed UK travel undermined the account that the applicant had been in hiding in Bangladesh during that period. The minister also relied on the applicant’s failure to disclose the trips during the asylum process, the earlier rejection of his protection claims, and country information which the minister considered showed that his relatively low political profile did not put him at risk on return.
Ms Justice Stewart said the applicant was asking the court to consider the date of the alleged meeting apart from his conduct and repeated lack of candour. She found no merit in the challenge to the minister’s assessment of country information, concluding that the minister had considered relevant material and reached a rational, reasoned decision. She also rejected the arguments about the minister’s comments on the applicant’s political motives and the finding that he had drip-fed information.
The court held that the minister was entitled to refuse revocation in light of the material before her, including the rules governing later revocation applications and the need for significant new facts or circumstances. The judgment did not determine a new protection application or issue a deportation order; it refused the relief sought against the revocation decision.
At the end of the hearing, the applicant again sought an interim injunction pending judgment. Justice Stewart refused it. She refused all reliefs sought in the judicial review proceedings.