Bayangol v Secretary of State for the Home Department
2005
COURT OF APPEAL (CRIMINAL DIVISION)
United Kingdom
CORAM
- LORD JUSTICE BROOKE
- LORD JUSTICE BUXTON
Areas of Law
- Immigration law
- Human rights Law
- Civil Procedure
2005
COURT OF APPEAL (CRIMINAL DIVISION)
United Kingdom
CORAM
AI Generated Summary
The Court of Appeal, led by Lord Justice Brooke (Vice President) with Lord Justice Buxton concurring, considered a Mongolian applicant’s request for permission to appeal from a 5 January 2005 IAT determination that overturned an adjudicator’s decision allowing asylum and human rights claims. The applicant, a former customs officer, had been tortured during an earlier detention, suffered a serious head injury in 1993, was convicted in 1995, and later faced threats from the Mongolian Mafia. After a violent 2001 restaurant incident, he was detained, charged, released on bail, hospitalised in 2002, and fled to the UK. The court declined permission on Refugee Convention grounds (imputed political opinion) and affirmed that Article 6 ECHR was not engaged. It found an arguable error in the IAT’s handling of Article 3 risk concerning pending charges and bail breach, granted permission limited to Article 3, and indicated remittal to the AIT would be desirable.
J U D G M E N T
1. THE VICE PRESIDENT: This is an application for permission to appeal against a decision of the Immigration Appeal Tribunal on 5th January 2005 which allowed the Secretary of State's appeal from a decision of an adjudicator on 21st August 2003, who had allowed the applicant's appeal on human rights grounds and Geneva Convention grounds from a decision of the Secretary of State on 6th May 2003, who had refused the application on both grounds.
2. The facts are fairly clearly set out in the decision of the adjudicator. This was yet another of these cases where the Secretary of State was not represented before the adjudicator (although the adjudicator had a statement of his written grounds for contesting the appeal).
3. The appellant is a citizen of Mongolia, who is now 36. His asylum claim was based on an allegation that he had a well-founded fear of persecution based on his previous persecution on grounds of imputed political opinion. He arrived in this country in June 2002 and applied for asylum quite quickly. His evidence was that, in the early 1990s, he worked as a Customs officer. A friend of his from his military service asked him to help out with arrangements to import some fruit drinks, which he did. He then discovered that it was a consignment of spirits and not fruit drinks. There was an incident in a hotel where three men, who said that they were respectively a police officer, a judge and a prosecutor, told him this and offered him $2,000, but he would not take the money. He later reported the matter to his night shift inspector, who called the police. The spirits were found. His friend was arrested, but the other men could not be found. When he reported to work the next day he was taken in for questioning by the police. He took the blame for giving clearance. The documents were in his name. His account of the men at the hotel was not believed. He was originally detained for smuggling as a suspect for fourteen days. He was tortured in detention by the police and by criminals. He was not allowed legal representation or visits. He was then released, on bail apparently, but, although he complained to the state prosecutor, no action was taken against the people who beat him when he was in detention.
4. On 27th April 1993 he was attacked and hit on the head with a heavy weapon. He lost consciousness, was taken to hospital, was treated for head injuries and, unhappily, developed an infection. He was left with mental and spinal co