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

Chapter 55.10 of the Enforcement Instructions and Guidance does not prohibit detention merely because a person has a serious mental illness. The question is whether the illness can be satisfactorily managed in detention, assessed purposively and pragmatically. The Secretary of State may generally rely on responsible clinicians, provided she has made reasonable enquiries and has not abdicated her own responsibility.

Independent evidence of torture requires more than a detainee’s account or a report which simply repeats that account. The evidence must be assessed on the particular facts.

Under the Hardial Singh principles, detention may continue although removal is not imminent, provided there remains a sufficient prospect of removal within a reasonable period. An injunction preventing removal does not automatically make continued detention unlawful.

The claimant, an Afghan national, sought damages for allegedly unlawful immigration detention lasting 19 days, from 14 May to 1 June 2012. He relied on three alternative grounds: serious mental illness which could not satisfactorily be managed in detention; independent evidence that he had been tortured; and continued detention after removal was no longer reasonably foreseeable.

The claim arose after the Secretary of State rejected further representations and detained the claimant pending removal. Medical and counselling evidence was provided during detention. An injunction prevented removal on 25 May 2012, and the claimant was released on bail on 1 June 2012. The central questions were whether detention breached Chapter 55.10 or the common-law limits on immigration detention.

1. Serious mental illness. The claimant had a serious mental illness, but failed to establish that it could not be satisfactorily managed in detention. The phrase in Chapter 55.10 had to be considered as a whole. The court was entitled to weigh the counsellor’s evidence against the contemporaneous assessments of detention-centre medical staff, who had daily responsibility for the claimant’s welfare and duties under Rule 35. The medical evidence recorded no current suicidal thoughts or intentions and proposed continuing support and medication review. The claimant also failed to show that the Secretary of State could only reasonably have concluded that his condition could not be managed.
2. Torture. The definition of torture adopted in R (EO and others) v SSHD [2013] EWHC 1236 (Admin) was broad enough potentially to include an intentional physical assault inflicted as punishment. The claimant’s account of witnessing his uncle’s shooting did not fall within that definition. His account of an assault on himself and his mother was capable of doing so, but the counsellor’s first report merely stated summarily that he had been tortured and did not provide independent evidence. The inconsistencies in the account and the contemporaneous records further supported the Secretary of State’s conclusion. This ground therefore failed.
3. Prospect of removal. The court applied the principles stated in R v Governor of Durham Prison, ex parte Hardial Singh [1984] 1 WLR 704, as set out in Lumba v SSHD [2012] 1 AC 245. The relevant question was whether, on the material available at the time, there remained a sufficient prospect of removal within a reasonable period. Hindsight could not be used to assess the decision. The injunction of 25 May did not automatically terminate the lawful basis for detention, although the Secretary of State could not simply wait until the judicial-review permission application was determined. Seven days had not elapsed before release, and the claim on this ground also failed.
4. The claim for damages for unlawful detention was dismissed.