Ahmed v Secretary of State for the Home Department

On a second appeal in an asylum and human-rights case, the court will intervene only for an error of law. A specialist immigration tribunal is entitled to evaluate the facts and country evidence, including whether past treatment in one country indicates a real future risk in another, provided it addresses the material legal issues. Past ill-treatment of a Somali national in an Ethiopian refugee camp was not necessarily indicative of treatment on return to Somalia. A distinction based on materially different circumstances, such as the vulnerability of an unaccompanied woman, may be legitimate. The threshold under Article 3 of the Human Rights Convention is high where the alleged ill-treatment would occur in a foreign state.

The appellant, a Somali national and member of the Eyle sub-clan, claimed asylum after leaving an Ethiopian refugee camp where he and his family had suffered attacks by militia. The Secretary of State refused asylum and leave to enter on 9 June 2003. An adjudicator dismissed the appeal on 24 October 2003, treating the Ethiopian events as insufficient to establish a risk on return to Somalia and distinguishing the decision concerning an unaccompanied Eyle woman in G.

The Immigration Appeal Tribunal dismissed the appellant’s appeal, notified on 25 January 2005. It held that the adjudicator had not erred in law and that the country material did not show specific targeting of Eyle clan members in Somalia. The central issue was whether the Tribunal had erred in law by failing to take account of the Ethiopian attacks, by distinguishing G on the basis that the appellant was male, and by rejecting the Article 3 claim.

1. Application for permission to appeal dismissed. There was no real prospect of showing that the Immigration Appeal Tribunal had erred on a point of law. The Tribunal had reviewed the legal points raised and reached a conclusion open to this specialist tribunal.
2. The challenge was properly characterised as an allegation that the adjudicator had failed to take account of material matters, rather than as a freestanding perversity challenge. The Tribunal was entitled to conclude that the appellant’s treatment in Ethiopia was not necessarily indicative of how he would be treated if returned to Somalia. The fact that members of his family had been kidnapped and taken back to Somalia, and that similar militia operated there, could be treated as relevant to vulnerability, but did not compel a finding of a well-founded risk on return.
3. The Tribunal was entitled to distinguish G because that case concerned a woman who would return without family support to an internally displaced persons’ camp, with particular risks of violence, poverty, discrimination and exclusion. The present appellant’s different circumstances justified the distinction.
4. The country evidence did not establish that members of the Eyle clan were specifically targeted in Somalia. Poor conditions and the return of former refugees, including with UNHCR assistance, did not by themselves establish a breach of Article 3 of the Human Rights Convention.
5. Article 3 involved a very high threshold in a foreign-state case involving potentially inhuman treatment abroad. The court was not persuaded that the more recent material relied on for the renewed application would necessarily alter the result, although assessment of that material would in principle be for the expert tribunal.

Permission to appeal was refused and the application was dismissed.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division) ([2005] EWCA Civ 636): renewed application for permission to appeal dismissed; no real prospect of establishing an error of law by the Immigration Appeal Tribunal.
• Immigration Appeal Tribunal: decision notified on 25 January 2005; appeal from the adjudicator dismissed.
• Adjudicator: appeal dismissed on 24 October 2003 against the Secretary of State’s refusal of asylum and leave to enter dated 9 June 2003.