The High Court has quashed the Minister for Justice and Equality’s refusal to revoke a deportation order against an anonymised Eritrean man, finding that the assessment of risks he said he would face on return was fundamentally flawed.
In a judgment delivered on 16 July 2013, Mr Justice McDermott ruled that the Minister had failed to apply the required legal principles or rigorously assess new country information submitted with the man’s application under section 3(11) of the Immigration Act 1999.
The man had been granted refugee status in 2005. That status was revoked in 2010 after he was sentenced to seven years in prison for rape and because of information about his fingerprints in Italy under a different name. A deportation order was made in June 2011. The judgment says he did not appeal the revocation of refugee status.
The man later sought judicial review of the deportation order. Those proceedings were adjourned by consent so he could ask the Minister to revoke it, and an undertaking was given that he would not be deported while that application was being decided. His July 2012 application relied on country information about the treatment in Eritrea of failed asylum seekers, people of military service age and those perceived to have left the country illegally.
The Minister refused to change the deportation decision. The man challenged that refusal, arguing that the assessment did not properly address the evidence or the risk of treatment contrary to Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Minister argued that the man’s account lacked credibility and that he had not raised these risks earlier.
The court accepted that important parts of the man’s account of how, when and why he left Eritrea had been disbelieved. But it said the assessment had to consider facts accepted by the authorities, including that he was Eritrean, of military service age and a failed asylum seeker, alongside the country information. It also found that his imprisonment, lack of local family or friends, and absence of legal advice before the deportation order were special circumstances explaining why he had not made the submissions earlier.
The judge criticised the suggestion that the man could avoid danger by concealing his asylum history from Eritrean authorities, describing that approach as unrealistic. The court did not itself decide whether he would face a real risk if deported. It held that the Minister had failed to assess that question rigorously, quashed the 27 September 2012 refusal and remitted the matter to the Minister for a decision applying the correct legal principles.