IC (Turkey) v Secretary of State for the Home Department

An appellate court should give an immigration determination a fair reading before treating imprecision as an error of law. Separate risk factors cannot be combined where none independently establishes a Convention risk. Arrests or fingerprinting do not establish persecution where there was no charge, no likely return record, little prospect of identification, and no evidence of treatment reaching the required level. Inconvenience, ill manners and hostility fall short of persecution. The renewed application for permission to appeal was refused.

The appellant, a Turkish citizen, sought protection under the Refugee Convention on the grounds of Kurdish ethnicity, Alevi religious belief and association with the KKP. He also relied on alleged arrests, fingerprinting and ill-treatment connected with his father’s political activities.

Designated Immigration Judge Billingham rejected the material claims in a determination heard in January 2008. The appellant renewed his application for permission to appeal, arguing that the judge had assessed the grounds separately and had failed clearly to reject, or had accepted, aspects of the account concerning arrest and detention. The central issue was whether the determination disclosed an arguable error of law.

Application refused.

1. The risk grounds were properly considered separately. If the evidence did not establish a risk factor arising from ethnicity, religion or political association, that factor could not be added to other insufficient factors to create a viable Refugee Convention claim.
2. The determination had to be given a fair reading. Applying the guidance referred to in AH (Sudan) v SSHD [2007] UKHL 49, the Court read paragraphs 18 and 19 of the determination as a whole. Although the judge had expressed himself with some diffidence, the determination, construed in the appellant’s favour, showed that he did not accept the material account of arrest and mistreatment.
3. Even if the claimed arrests and fingerprinting were assumed, they did not disclose an error of law. The appellant had not been formally charged, the findings indicated that the arrests would not generate a record accessible through the GPTS system on return, and his father, said to be more deeply involved with the KKP, had not suffered comparable persecution.
4. The possibility of reliance on local records did not alter the result. The appellant’s low profile made identification significantly unlikely. Even if identified, the treatment described amounted at most to inconvenience, ill manners or hostility, rather than persecution at the level required by the Refugee Convention.

Lord Justice Stanley Burnton agreed with Lord Justice Buxton. Permission to appeal was not granted.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): A renewed application for permission to appeal was refused on 10 July 2008.
• Asylum & Immigration Tribunal: Designated Immigration Judge Billingham determined the appellant’s claim in a hearing in January 2008. The Court of Appeal found no arguable error of law in that determination.