Amirifard, R (on the application of) v Secretary of State for the Home Department

For naturalisation, the statutory requirement of good character is distinct from criminal liability and from the refugee exclusion test. The Secretary of State may reasonably take account of an applicant’s association or involvement in crimes against humanity, even where the applicant did not personally commit the crimes. Relevant matters include the applicant’s role, knowledge, duration of involvement, seniority, attempts at disassociation and any mitigating circumstances. The court reviews the decision only on traditional public law grounds. Given the broad statutory discretion, the threshold for irrationality is high: the decision must be one which no rational decision-maker could have reached.

The claimant, an Iranian national granted asylum and indefinite leave to remain, challenged the Secretary of State’s refusal to naturalise him. He had served as a conscript prison guard in Iran and had guarded prisoners subjected to torture and execution. The Secretary of State accepted that he had not personally tortured or executed anyone, but concluded that his role amounted to association with or involvement in crimes against humanity and cast serious doubts on his character.

The claim concerned the legality and rationality of that assessment, including the claimant’s conscription, mental health, alleged duress, refusal to shoot rioting prisoners, attempts to disassociate himself from the prison service and subsequent good conduct in the United Kingdom.

1. Claim dismissed. The Secretary of State’s refusal to naturalise was lawful and rational.
2. Under section 6 and Schedule 1 to the British Nationality Act 1981, good character is a mandatory requirement. The Secretary of State must be satisfied that the applicant is of good character before exercising the discretion to grant naturalisation. The claimant bore the burden of satisfying her on the material before her.
3. The good-character assessment is a subjective administrative evaluation. It is not necessary for the Secretary of State to establish that the applicant personally committed an offence triable before the International Criminal Court. The test is also distinct from exclusion under Article 1F of the Refugee Convention.
4. The Secretary of State was entitled to regard guarding prisoners during torture and executions as more than a low-level association. Such conduct could amount to assistance or facilitation under Article 25(3)(c) of the Rome Statute and, in any event, was sufficient evidence of involvement or association under the Nationality Instructions.
5. The claimant could not rely on the relevant Rome Statute defences. His mental illness did not destroy his capacity to appreciate the nature or unlawfulness of his conduct; the evidence did not establish duress involving an imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm; and the conditions for the superior-orders defence were not met.
6. The Secretary of State reasonably considered the length of the claimant’s service, his limited attempts at disassociation, his refusal to shoot prisoners and his good conduct in the United Kingdom. The disputed chronology was based on contradictory evidence supplied by the claimant. The conditions for a material mistake of fact amounting to an error of law were not established.
7. The court’s task was not to decide whether the claimant was criminally liable for crimes against humanity. It was to decide whether no rational decision-maker could have concluded that serious doubts remained about his good character. That demanding threshold was not met.

The judgment was a first-instance determination of a judicial review claim. An earlier judicial review challenge had been withdrawn by consent after the Secretary of State agreed to reconsider the naturalisation application. Permission for the present claim was later granted at an oral renewal hearing.