The High Court refused an application to prevent the deportation of a Bangladeshi national while he challenges the Minister for Justice and Equality’s refusal to revoke his deportation order.
The ruling, delivered by Mr Justice Mac Eochaidh on 16 March 2015, concerned interim relief only. The court had granted leave for judicial review on 3 November 2014, but said that grant did not itself establish grounds to stop deportation pending the substantive proceedings.
The applicant said he had been a university lecturer and an active member of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party. He claimed police raided a political meeting at his home in March 2008, forcing him to flee, and that he feared persecution if returned. He also relied on a changed political situation in Bangladesh and country information, including a September 2014 Amnesty International report.
The Minister’s position, as set out in court, was that the applicant had a low political profile and would not face a risk of harm. The Minister had also disbelieved his account of why he left Bangladesh, citing his undisclosed UK visits during a period when he had said he was in hiding. Earlier asylum and subsidiary protection decisions had rejected his claims, and those decisions had not been set aside by the court.
Justice Mac Eochaidh applied the principles in *Okunade* and *P.B.N.* He said the applicant had to show, on an arguable grounds basis, a credible basis for a real risk of significant harm. The court found that the evidence did not establish such a risk for people with a political profile like the applicant’s, or show that the Minister’s assessment was wrong.
The judge also said the applicant had not addressed how his earlier untruths about being in hiding affected his claim that he personally feared harm. The court noted that he had returned to Bangladesh from the UK, and that he had not explained the significance of that return in light of his claimed fear. The judge said the Amnesty report did not show how the conditions it described applied to the applicant or contradicted the material considered by the Minister.
The court distinguished the case from *P.B.N.*, where evidential conflicts about risk had supported interim relief. Finding no comparable conflict here, Justice Mac Eochaidh refused the interlocutory injunction restraining deportation. The ruling did not determine the judicial review challenge to the refusal to revoke the deportation order.