The Claimant was represented by Greg Ó Ceallaigh KC and Taimour Lay of the Garden Court Immigration Law Team, instructed by Cooley (UK) LLP.
The High Court has quashed the government’s decision to refuse protection to a former Afghan Judge who worked closely with the UK in an Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) in Kabul.
The Afghan national “ACG”, who cannot be named because he and his family are in hiding in Afghanistan, applied to come to the UK under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP) on the basis that his work had put him at severe risk from the Taliban regime which returned to power in August 2021. The Ministry of Defence, in reliance on an assessment by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), issued a refusal, despite accepting that ACG had worked in the senior judiciary in the 2010s as claimed.
This case offers important guidance on the proper approach to the assessment of whether a person meets the requirements of the ARAP scheme following the judgment of the Court of Appeal in LND1 v SSHD [2024] EWCA Civ 278.
The Claimant succeeded on all four grounds at a hearing held urgently because of the highly compelling and dangerous circumstances in which the Claimant and his wife and children were living.
The Honorable Sir Peter Lane, sitting as a Judge of the High Court, ruled that “the approach adopted by the defendant … has had the [ …] effect of leading the defendant to afford no material weight to the institutional relationship between the FCDO and the ATC, which existed at the time the claimant was a serving judge at that court.”
Sir Peter Lane also described the decision-maker’s approach to some of the evidence provided with the application as “seriously troubling”.
The ARAP application will now have to be remade by the Defendant within 28 days.
The Claimant was represented by Greg Ó Ceallaigh KC and Taimour Lay of the Garden Court Immigration Law Team, instructed by Cooley (UK) LLP, with assistance from Ronan Toal of the Garden Court Immigration Law Team.
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