Home Office wins key Zimbabwe asylum ruling

Home Office wins key Zimbabwe asylum ruling

• Decision will impact on all Zim asylum seekers

• UK sham marriages law struck down

By Staff Reporter

THE British Home Office has won an appeal against a ruling of the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal (AIT) which blocked all forced removals of failed asylum seekers to Zimbabwe.

Three Appeal Court judges, sitting at the Royal Courts of Justice on Wednesday referred the case back to the AIT which can now make completely new findings, a lawyer for the Zimbabwe Association said.

The judges ruled that the AIT had "erred in law" last October.

The original decision said that Zimbabweans, who can only be identified as AA and LK, would be at risk of harm if they were returned to Zimbabwe which is accused of gross human rights violations.

"The judges have ruled that findings of credibility should be made in each case and remitted the case back to the AIT for a fresh hearing. They rejected the argument that involuntary return will subject the asylum seekers to persecution," lawyer, Yvonne Mahlunge said.

She added: "What it means is that none of the AA case fact findings from the AIT hearing will be binding. The AIT can now make completely new findings."

However, she said all forced removals to Zimbabwe will remain frozen until all the appeal avenues had been exhausted.

Home Office Minister Charles Clarke welcomed Wednesday's decision, saying removals were "fundamental" to the asylum system, according to teh BBC.

But the Refugee Council said it was clear Zimbabwe was "a very dangerous place".

Clarke said he welcomed the opportunity "to put the facts again to the AIT on the treatment of both enforced and voluntary returnees".

"The removal of failed asylum seekers is fundamental to the integrity of our asylum system.

"The government remains deeply concerned about the political and economic crisis in Zimbabwe, and continues to press for an end to abuses.

"I cannot emphasise strongly enough that we would not enforce the return of a failed asylum seeker to Zimbabwe if we believed that they were at real risk of mistreatment."

Refugee Council spokesman Tim Finch called on the government to restore the moratorium on returning failed asylum seekers to Zimbabwe until a definitive decision had been taken by the court.

"We are now in the absurd situation where the issue is pinging back and forth between higher and lower courts.

"A sort of legal hall of mirrors where we don't really get any clarity, yet it is clear that Zimbabwe is a very dangerous place," he said.

The Home Office appealed against the AIT's October 2005 ruling which granted that an unnamed Zimbabwean man (AA) could not be deported, even though his asylum claim was entirely without merit, because the regime of Robert Mugabe could decide he was a spy and torture him.

In effect this meant the very act of claiming asylum in the UK endangered Zimbabweans, the tribunal ruled, meaning the government was obliged to protect them.

The government immediately challenged the decision, saying it had a right to remove unfounded asylum claimants.

Campaigners claimed ministers had put removal targets ahead of safety.

The judgement in the Court of Appeal comes after more than a year of bitter legal battles between Zimbabwean asylum seekers and ministers.

Some 15,000 Zimbabweans sought asylum between 2000 and 2005, with only a few hundred granted refugee status. Approximately 300 Zimbabweans were returned to the country, not all forcibly, before the courts halted removals in October last year.
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