England and Wales Court of Appeal (Civil Division) Decisions

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM THE IMMIGRATION APPEAL TRIBUNAL

		Royal Courts of Justice Strand London, WC2 Monday, 28 October 2002

1. LORD JUSTICE BUXTON: This is a renewed application for permission to appeal from the determination of the Immigration Appeal Tribunal in the case of the applicant, a Miss Tasci, who is a female citizen of the Republic of Turkey.
2. Miss Tasci, according to her account, arrived in the United Kingdom on 30 December 1999 and claimed asylum upon arrival here. She first set out her claim in an interview record on 25 January 2001. I do not need to set that out: it is detailed in very clear terms by the special adjudicator in paragraphs 3-4 of his determination. What does, however, stand out from that account is that the burden of her complaint of fear of persecution was based upon connections, not directly of herself but of her family, with the PKK in Turkey, and she gave a circumstantial account in that statement of physical attacks on her when she had been detained by the police forces in Turkey.
3. She was interviewed in May 2001 (that is to say, some two or three months after the statement that I have already mentioned) and it was on that occasion, but not before, that she said that during the encounters that she had already detailed she had, in fact, been raped by the security forces and had also been accused of connection with the PKK. The allegation of rape by the security forces on the basis of her connection with the PKK was obviously a serious, though not the only, part of her case that she feared persecution on grounds, as I understand it, of political affiliation were she to be returned to Turkey.
4. The adjudicator, in a determination dated 13 December 2001, after a hearing at which he had heard evidence from the applicant and at which the applicant had had the benefit of being represented by Miss Sheehan of counsel who represents her today, went into considerable detail as to the fears and apprehensions explained to him by the applicant. In paragraph 24 the adjudicator made it clear, in uncompromising terms, that he did not believe the applicant's evidence that she had been raped. He also made it clear that he had read and understood a report that was before him by an expert, a Miss Laizer, regarding the circumstances of possible sexual abuse in the culture from which the applicant came, and he also accepted that, as she said, the applicant would have found it difficult to admit at an earlier stage to an incident of rape. Nonetheless, basing himself on inconsistencies in the accounts that had been given and the lateness with which this claim had been made, he held that he did not believe the allegations of rape.
5. He then turned to the allegations of more general ill-treatment during detention and pointed again, in paragraph 27 of his determination, to a number of inconsistencies. In paragraph 28 he said

"By reason of these inconsistencies I find that I cannot accept the majority of the appellant's evidence .... I am also willing to accept, at the low level applicable in asylum cases, that the appellant may on two occasions have been detained for a matter of hours and on the final occasion perhaps for two days. I do not accept that she was physically ill-treated. She was released without charge and even on the appellant's own evidence she said that this was because the authorities had no evidence against her."

The adjudicator then pointed to circumstances in which she had been able to travel through the country and leave Turkey, and came to the conclusion that she had very limited connections with the PKK and that she would not be at risk of persecution were she to return to Turkey; that, in his view, not having occurred to her when she was in that country.

6. That was a comprehensive finding to which, in my judgement, the adjudicator was entitled to come.
7. The Immigration Appeal Tribunal did, however, grant the applicant permission to appeal to them. The only part of the order granting permission to which we need refer is the concern expressed that the adjudicator had not given sufficient reasons for his finding that the applicant had not been ill-treated, bearing in mind that she had consistently made such allegations. The tribunal did think that the adjudicator's conclusion that the applicant had not been raped could be upheld.
8. We therefore turn to the judgment of the Immigration Appeal Tribunal, particularly with reference to the point whether sufficient reasoning had been advanced to demonstrate the adjudicator's conclusion that there had not been significant ill-treatment; and also to address the fact that the adjudicator in that connection had not given attention to the background evidence with regard to the situation in Turkey generally.
9. The tribunal said that it was unfortunate that the adjudicator had made no mention of this material in setting out his conclusions. They, however, continued as follows in paragraph 8:

" . . .  we conclude that this does not affect the overall sustainability of the Adjudicator's conclusions in this regard. The Adjudicator formed the view that he did not believe the Appellant, a view based to a very large degree on the fact that she did not detail claims to have been mistreated during the first five arrests until her last statement prepared in readiness for the hearing and also on the fact that she claimed to have suffered the same treatment on each occasion. The Adjudicator regarded this as implausible."

They then accepted that such claims of mistreatment had been made, but held that the adjudicator, who had seen and heard the appellant, was entitled to take the discrepancies into consideration in reaching his conclusion.

10. In the light of those two determinations, there is in my judgement no possibility at all of finding a point of law suitable for the consideration of this court. Both tribunals went into the matter in considerable detail and reached conclusions that were based upon a reasoned approach to the evidence. True it is, and complaint is made, that in dealing with the matter of ill-treatment the adjudicator did not put that in the context of the overall situation in Turkey. But, first of all, the Immigration Appeal Tribunal, in the terms that I have already set out, addressed that matter and considered that overall the adjudicator was justified in reaching the conclusion that he did; and, secondly, I would respectfully adopt what was said by Sedley LJ when he on paper refused permission to appeal on this point. I will venture to quote what he said:

"The background of police brutality and the use of rape in Turkey -- and I accept that the evidence that it has diminished does not amount to much -- cannot fill the space where an applicant's account of her own experiences is disbelieved not because it is incredible but because it is inconsistent."

11. Sedley LJ said that this was a worrying case. Any case involving allegations of the sort made by the appellant is bound to cause concern. But those charged with the duty of applying the Immigration Rules have to decide whether allegations, worrying though they are, are in fact true and in this case clear determinations on that point of fact were reached by both tribunals. There is no ground for this court to intervene. I would not grant permission.
12. LORD JUSTICE CARNWATH: I agree.
ORDER: Application refused