NK (Ethiopia) & Anor v Secretary of State for the Home Department

The application I have to deal with is, in form, one for an extension of time in which to renew an application for permission to appeal following refusal on the papers. The application was originally refused by Sir Henry Brooke on 4 October 2007 but not properly renewed until 4 January 2008. There are a variety of reasons for the delay which I need not explain because, as I said at the beginning of this morning’s hearing, if the proposed appeal has merit I would grant the necessary extension of time.

So I turn straight away to the merits. The proposed appeal is from a decision of the AIT on a reconsideration in which the AIT dismissed the two applicants’ (NK and BK) appeals from the Secretary of State’s rejection of their claims for asylum and related humanitarian and Human Rights Act Relief. The applicants are brother and sister, now aged 23 and 21, and citizens of Ethiopia, who arrived and were admitted to the United Kingdom as tourists on passports in their own names on 17 July 2005. Six weeks later they claimed asylum on the basis that they were members of an organisation called the African Initiatives for a Democratic World Order (“AIDWO”), on whose behalf they had monitored the general election in Ethiopia on 15 May 2005, following which they had been arrested. They feared persecution if returned to Ethiopia because of their involvement with AIDWO and the fact that they had reported irregularities in the election and, as such, they would be arrested and persecuted for what they had said.

The immigration judge, in a long and well-reasoned decision, accepted that the applicants had monitored the election but did not accept that they had been arrested after it or that they were then or are now of any interest to the authorities as a result of their activities and, in particular, as a result of what they had seen and said when they were monitoring the election. The immigration judge derived support for this conclusion from the objective evidence about events occurring in Ethiopia at the time and the fact that after the election the applicants had not been arrested or detained, had been issued with passports in the weeks following the election and had been allowed to leave the country thereafter.

The Notice of Appeal challenges these findings of fact on a number of grounds prepared in the name of the applicants but no doubt with assistance from others. The application was dismissed by Sir Henry Brooke on the papers saying:

“In a very clear and full determination the AIT reached conclusions of fact adverse to the appellants, which were open to it on the evidence it received. There is no right of appeal against findings of fact and I do not consider that it is properly arguable that the AIT committed any error of law in the way it set about its task. There is therefore no real prospect of success on this appeal.”

I pointed out this morning to the applicants through the interpreter (although both of them speak very impressive English) that the position is that this court is not an immigration court; it only has jurisdiction to consider an immigration case if it can be shown that there are errors of law in the decision of the specialist immigration tribunal, in this case the AIT. Both applicants have said -- charmingly and eloquently -- why it is that the account which they gave to the immigration judge was a truthful one. They say again that they were arrested immediately after the election. They say that when they were arrested they did not say anything; they told the police that they had not reported any irregularities in the election although in fact there were such irregularities. They say that in the disorder which followed from the fact that the election results were not immediately announced, there was nothing against them. This explains why they were not arrested or detained further or questioned in any way. It was only after they left the country when the president finally announced the result of the election that the authorities came down on those like them who had in fact witnessed and reported irregularities at the time of the election.

I only need to repeat what they have said for it to be self-evident that the points they have raised this morning do not raise errors of law and the position remains as it did when Sir Henry Brooke refused permission on the papers. There really is no real prospect of any appeal to this court and for that reason and that reason alone I refuse the application to extend time because to do so would be pointless if the appeal has no merit in law, which I am afraid it has not. I have sympathy for these two young people, who are, as I have already said, charming. They feel strongly about the position and have made it clear that, but for their fear, they would love to return to their country and resume the lives which they had.