Nadanasikamani v Secretary of State for the Home Department

Country guidance on the risk posed by the LTTE in Colombo must be applied to the evidence before the tribunal. A list of vulnerable groups in such guidance need not be exhaustive or mutually exclusive, but the decisive question may be whether the claimant has a sufficiently high anti-LTTE profile to attract particular attention.

An ordinary EPDP worker who was not a prominent official, and had not defected from the LTTE, could reasonably relocate to Colombo where the evidence did not establish a real risk of persecution. A tribunal may reject an unsupported account of a risk from state authorities where it gives adequate and rational reasons for doing so.

The appellant, a Tamil national of Sri Lanka, appealed against a determination dismissing his de novo appeal from the refusal of asylum and humanitarian protection. He claimed a risk from the Sri Lankan authorities after allegedly throwing a grenade, and a risk from the LTTE because of several years of work for the EPDP in the Jaffna area.

The immigration judge rejected the grenade account as insufficiently evidenced. The judge accepted that the appellant had worked for the EPDP and might face a localised risk in Jaffna, but found that he was not a high-profile activist and could relocate safely to Colombo. The central issue was whether the judge had misinterpreted and misapplied country guidance concerning LTTE risk in Colombo.

1. Appeal dismissed. Auld LJ, with whom Carnwath and Richards LJJ agreed, held that the immigration judge was entitled to reject the asserted risk from the Sri Lankan authorities. Apart from evidence that a grenade incident occurred, the account that the appellant was the person responsible and was known to the authorities depended on his own unsupported evidence. The judge had given adequate and rational reasons for finding the evidence insufficient.
2. The immigration judge had correctly interpreted and applied the country guidance in PS (LTTE Internal Flight Sufficiency of Protection) Sri Lanka CG [2004] UKIAT 00297. The categories stated there were not exhaustive or mutually exclusive. Their common feature was a claimant of sufficiently high anti-LTTE interest to be particularly likely to be targeted. On the accepted facts, the appellant was one of a number of EPDP workers and not a prominent official. He had never been an LTTE member and so could not, in the ordinary sense, be a defector, renegade or traitor to it. He was therefore not shown to face a real risk from the LTTE if relocated to Colombo.
3. The observations in R (Sinnarasa) v Secretary of State Home Department [2005] EWHC 1126 (Admin) did not assist the appellant. They concerned the distinct and limited question under section 94(2) certification of whether an assumed claim was bound to fail. They did not decide a country-guidance principle or undermine the immigration judge’s factual application of PS.
4. Most of the objective material relied on by the appellant had been considered in PS. There was no material factual difference requiring its guidance to be watered down or varied. The immigration judge had considered the subjective and objective evidence and his conclusion was neither irrational nor inadequately reasoned.
5. Carnwath LJ added that a party asserting that an important aspect of the case was overlooked must have put the point clearly before the tribunal and supplied evidence to support it.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division) — by [2006] EWCA Civ 173, dismissed the appellant’s appeal.
• Immigration Appeal Tribunal — the appeal arose from proceedings recorded under [HX/21155/2003]. The immigration judge’s determination of 20 June 2005 dismissed the de novo appeal on asylum and humanitarian-protection grounds.
• Secretary of State for the Home Department — by decision letter dated 10 February 2003, refused asylum and humanitarian protection.