Case summaries

Two things are required for recognition of refugee status: the existence of a ground for persecution (whether actual or threatened) and the breakdown of the social bonds between the country of origin and its citizen to the extent that the State is no longer able to guarantee protection.

The seven year time lapse since the Sunni Muslim Applicant’s former service in the Iraqi army, no evidence of future risk arising from previous injuries, and no medical reasons preventing return, led the majority to find that return to Iraq would not violate the applicants rights under Articles 2 or 3.

Internal contradictions in the Sunni Muslim Applicant’s account, coupled with the time lapse since the relevant acts of persecution, led the majority to conclude that his return to Iraq, despite former employment with US-backed security companies, would not violate Articles 2 or 3.

The return of a Pakistani national of the Ahmadiyya religion to Pakistan would violate Article 3. The French authorities had wrongly rejected the Ahmadiyya Applicant’s credibility, which is supported by evidence of prosecution by the Pakistani authorities for blasphemy.

Greek detention conditions and lack of effective review violate Iranian asylum seeker’s Article 3 and Article 13 rights, but complaint against removal declared inadmissible and detention ruled to be lawful and non-arbitrary.

The reasonable possibility of relocation to the Anbar governorate rendered a Sunni Muslim’s return to Iraq Article 3 compliant in spite of the personal risk he faced in Baghdad from a blood feud. His former membership of the Ba’ath party and military service was no longer regarded as a threat by the Court.

The contested judgment is unconstitutional as it does not provide a clear way of assessing the jurisdiction of the third country when dealing with the application. It also reveals that the situation of the Applicant for international protection is unclear in the event that the application is rejected by the third country and the Applicant is not allowed to enter its territory, and shows that it is unclear as to what the Applicant can contest in this procedure.

An efficient legal system that would stop the extradition to a country in which the Applicant could be exposed to inhuman treatment has to have suspensive effect.

This High Court ruling is in relation to a deportation order issued to remove three failed asylum seekers from Ireland. The case also deals with unlawful detention under Art. 40.4.2 of the Constitution and the inviolability of the dwelling under Art 40.5 of the Constitution. 

The interest of an applicant to obtain a temporary stay from deportation to Italy for the time being predominates, if the applicant, in case of his return back to Italy, would be threatened with serious damage to his health due to inadequate accommodation opportunities there and because medical care would not be guaranteed due to a permanent overstretch of resources.

This ruling concerned the scope of judicial review when reviewing compliance with the criterion of Article 10(1) for determining responsibility for examining an asylum application under Regulation 343/2003. The Court held that Art. 19(2) of the Regulation must be interpreted as meaning that, in circumstances where a Member State has agreed to take charge of an applicant for asylum on the basis of the Art. 10(1) criterion the only way in which the applicant for asylum can call into question the choice of that criterion is by pleading systemic deficiencies in the asylum procedure and in the conditions for the reception of applicants for asylum in that Member State, which provide substantial grounds for believing that the applicant for asylum would face a real risk of being subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment within the meaning of Art. 4 of the Charter.