England and Wales Court of Appeal (Civil Division) Decisions

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE
COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM THE ASYLUM AND IMMIGRATION TRIBUNAL
[AIT No: AA/00401/2006]

		Royal Courts of Justice Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
		23rd January 2008

Mr Justice Forbes:

1. This is a renewed application for permission to appeal the decision, dated 18 June 2007, whereby the Immigration Judge dismissed the appeal of the applicant against the refusal of the Secretary of State to grant refugee status and also rejecting her appeal on human rights grounds.
2. Reconsideration of that appeal was then sought and on 17 September 2007 the Senior Immigration Judge made no order on the application for reconsideration. The matters were considered on paper by Hallett LJ and she refused permission to appeal, giving as her reasons:

"There is no reasonable prospect of successfully appealing the first [immigration judge]'s finding on internal relocation (for which he provides ample justification)."

3. The applicant is a Turkish citizen. She claims to have entered the United Kingdom clandestinely by lorry on 31 October 2005 and claimed asylum on 3 November 2005, her two children joining in the appeal as her dependants. Her application was refused by the Secretary of State on 19 December 2005. She appealed against that decision and at her hearing on 8 February 2006 the Immigration Judge dismissed her appeal on both asylum and human rights grounds.
4. On 1 March 2006 the Senior Immigration Judge ordered reconsideration of that decision and, in due course, the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal found that the first judge had made material errors of law. As a result, the matter came back before the Immigration Judge to whom I referred earlier, as a fresh second-stage reconsideration hearing; in effect, hearing the entire matter afresh. The Immigration Judge heard the evidence and, in due course, came to the conclusion that the applicant was at real risk of persecution or Article 3 ill-treatment in her home area, and that not sufficient time had elapsed for that risk to have been eliminated.
5. Having reached that conclusion, which involved accepting the credibility of the applicant's account of the persecution to which she had been subjected in her home area (she being an Alevi Kurd), the Immigration Judge then went on to consider the question of internal relocation. He came to the conclusion that the applicant could relocate successfully, notwithstanding having been exposed to persecution in her home area and notwithstanding the fact that there was a real risk to her of persecution or Article 3 ill-treatment were she to be returned to her home area.
6. The renewed application for permission was originally founded essentially on the    proposition that neither the Immigration Judge nor the Senior Immigration Judge had given full and proper consideration to the changing situation in Turkey which, it was submitted, made internal relocation extremely difficult, if not impossible, for people in the applicant's position, i.e. somebody in respect of whom there has been persecution in the past in the home area.
7. Events have rather over taken the original grounds of application because circumstances very similar to the index case came before the Court of Appeal on 3 October 2007, in the case of SD (Turkey) v SSHD [2007] EWCA Civ 1032 (case no: C5/2007/1333). That was a case in which the applicant had renewed his application for permission to appeal, permission having been refused on the papers by Sir Henry Brooke. It was a case that involved very similar factual circumstances to the present case: the applicant was an Alevi Kurd from Turkey who had suffered persecution in his home area. He was found, however, to be able to relocate in relative safety to, for example, Istanbul, and therefore he was not granted refugee status.
8. The Court of Appeal, however, accepted as arguable the submission that, for a person in that position, there is a very real risk that relocation will not be possible. This is because the returning applicant will have to go through Istanbul airport and there is a very real risk that the circumstances giving rise to the original persecution will be known and will result in interrogation at Istanbul. The relocation will then not be able to go ahead. The essence of the decision of the Court of Appeal appears in paragraphs 3 and 4 of the short judgment of Sedley LJ, where he said this:

"3. The interstitial point between these two findings is, as in other cases, critical in this case. It is that in order to return to Turkey and relocate, the applicant must pass through an airport, most probably Istanbul airport, at which his papers will be examined and he will be interrogated. His papers will consist, inevitably, of emergency documentation obtained by the Home Office from or through the Turkish legation in this country. The authorities in Istanbul, it seems apparent, will therefore know in advance that he is coming and in what circumstances his documentation has been obtained. It is Mr Harding's case -- with the support of the findings in IK -- that the applicant will inevitably be interrogated at the airport as to what he was doing in this country. He is not expected by our law to lie about it. The truth about his being in this country is, of course, that he had a good claim for asylum (internal relocation apart) because of the history of detention and ill-treatment that he had previously undergone at the hands of the security services. Although it is thought that all that is on the computerised record at the airport, on the GBTS system, is formal arrests, that will not matter if it becomes known, as Mr Harding submits it inevitably will, that this is a man with a record of interrogation about suspected separatist activity at the hands of the security forces."

"4. From that point, there is no knowing, says Mr Harding, what may happen to him, but a real risk that he will never to the point of relocation and will instead fall back into the hands of the security forces."

9. In the event, the Court of Appeal granted permission to appeal for the reasons summarised by Sedley LJ in the passages to which I have just referred. In short, the point is that relocation is far from being guaranteed in cases involving the return of Alevi Kurds who have actually been subjected to persecution for convention reasons in the past and who are being returned on the basis that they should be able to relocate elsewhere in Turkey. It seems to me that the present case is indistinguishable from the case of SD.
10. Accordingly I grant permission to appeal. I have been informed by Mr Collins that the appeal in SD has now been heard and was allowed. That information is given to me in good faith by Mr Collins, who has carried out a computer search. Unfortunately he has not been able to obtain a transcript of the judgement from the Court of Appeal, but I am confident that what he tells me is correct and that of course strengthens the reason for granting permission in this case. For those reasons permission to appeal is granted accordingly.

Order: Application granted