The High Court has dismissed the grounds currently pleaded in Y.Y.’s challenge to the Minister for Justice and Equality’s refusal to revoke a deportation order, while adjourning the case to allow the applicant to seek an amendment on one issue concerning reports of secret detention in Algeria.
In a judgment delivered on 28 January 2019, Mr Justice Richard Humphreys considered a challenge to the Minister’s decision of 22 November 2018 under section 3(11) of the Immigration Act 1999. The decision followed an earlier High Court ruling that quashed a previous refusal and directed the Minister to reconsider the application.
Y.Y. argued that the Minister applied the wrong legal test for assessing risk under Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights and failed to give reasons on several issues. The judge rejected those arguments. He said the Minister had considered the relevant Strasbourg case law and had asked legitimate questions about the country material and the applicant’s circumstances. The decision, read as a whole, did not impose an incorrect evidential threshold.
The judge also found that the Minister had adequately explained the decision. He said the Minister was not required to provide a separate, detailed explanation for every subsidiary point, provided the reasoning showed a clear path to the conclusion. The applicant’s remaining grounds included claims that the Minister’s assessment of Algeria’s human rights situation and the applicant’s individual risk was unreasonable. The judge held that the Minister could rationally reach the conclusions described in the decision, including that doubts about a risk of treatment contrary to Article 3 had been dispelled.
One issue remained problematic. The Minister’s decision stated that there had been no reports of incommunicado detention since earlier case law. The judgment noted that material cited from the UN Human Rights Committee in 2018 referred to reports documenting secret detention centres. The judge said the distinction advanced by the Minister’s counsel between secret detention and incommunicado detention did not resolve the point, and it was unclear whether the Minister had taken the later reports into account.
However, the applicant had not specifically pleaded that issue and had not applied to amend the proceedings despite the respondent’s objection. The court therefore dismissed the challenge on the grounds as pleaded. It adjourned the proceedings to give the applicant an opportunity, if he wished, to seek an amendment limited to the issue of reports of secret or incommunicado detention. The judgment did not itself quash the 22 November decision or order the Minister to reconsider it.