Case summaries

In view of the fact that the Regional Court failed to address the objections made by the Appellant in his appeal, unlawfully considered the  Appellant to be making an application for recognition as a refugee sur place, failed to deal with the evidence submitted by the Appellant in conjunction with his appeal (that his case was different from an application for recognition as a refugee “sur place”), and since it was beyond doubt that the Court acted on outside of  the subject matter of the appeal, it denied the Appellant the opportunity to have his objections heard before the Court.

This case concerned state persecution. The CALL held that when the agents of persecution are national authorities, there is a strong presumption that protection within the country of origin is not accessible, as the authorities are able to pursue a person throughout the entire territory under their control.

The CALL ruled that while the reasons for persecution given in an asylum application can be, by themselves insufficiently serious, they could, when taken cumulatively and in connection with the situation in the country of origin, justify being given the benefit of the doubt.

The applicant, a Tunisian national, having served a sentence in Italy on the charge, among others, of criminal conspiracy, faced deportation from Italy to Tunisia, where he risked ill-treatment.

The Court found that the deportation of the applicant to Tunisia would constitute a violation of Article 3 ECHR. The absolute nature of Article 3 meant that the conduct of the applicant was irrelevant for the purposes of Article 3.

The Secretary of State for Justice does not have to give an applicant who submitted copies of documents of which he had the possibility of acquiring the originals before he left his country, an opportunity to submit these originals during the asylum process, regardless of the State’s duty to conduct research and cooperate with the applicant as determined in Art 8 of the Procedures Directive and Art 4 of the Qualification Directive.

This case concerned subsequent applications for asylum. The CALL ruled that the principle of res judicata (matter already judged) is not applicable in a case where the subsequent application is not based on the same set of facts as the earlier application.

Currently every Sunnite and Shiite from Central and South Iraq is to be considered as a refugee within the meaning of Section 60 (1) Residence Act and the 1951 Refugee Convention, if he/she originates from a region with mixed denominations.

Returnees who originate from regions of mixed denominations cannot obtain internal protection in any part of Iraq.

The Council of State ruled that significant similarities between accounts that were being presented by different asylum seekers with the same nationality, ethnic origin and provenance, who applied for asylum in the same period of time, was certainly remarkable, even suspicious, but that this suspicion alone does not  suffice to establish fraud by the applicants.

Under Art 4 of the Qualification Directive the applicant is obliged to substantiate his application. No obligation exists on the State, if the applicant failed to do so, to provide an expert who can establish the authenticity of the submitted documents.