Tribunal decisions

The decision

Upper Tribunal
(Immigration and Asylum Chamber) Appeal no: PA/14309/2016

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

At
Decision & Reasons Promulgated
on 01.11.2017
on 07.11.2017

Before:
Upper Tribunal Judge
John FREEMAN
Between:
Saiful EHSAN
appellant
and

respondent
Representation:
For the appellant: Mr James Howard, solicitor, Fountain, Walsall
For the respondent: Mr Lawrence Tarlow
DECISION AND REASONS
This is an appeal, by the , against the decision of the First-tier Tribunal (Judge Manjit Kaur Obhi), sitting at Birmingham on 31 January, to an asylum and human rights appeal by a citizen of Bangladesh, born 1990. The Home Office had appealed, and the first-tier decision had been set aside: the deputy judge had gone on, apparently without notice to the parties, to make a fresh decision on the appeal. This had led to an application for permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal, which was treated by Judge Devinder Kaur Gill under rr. 43 & 48 of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008 as an application to set aside the deputy judge's decision.
2. Judge Gill upheld the deputy judge's decision to set aside the first-tier decision; but set aside her decision to dismiss the appeal. She directed that it should be re-listed before the same deputy judge (but there has been an order for transfer), who might decide to limit the hearing to deciding whether the appeal should be allowed or dismissed, on the basis of the reasoning and findings of fact which appear at paragraphs 1 - 31 of the first-tier decision.
HISTORY
3. With the agreement of both sides, I took those paragraphs as the basis for my own decision, together with concise further submissions before me. Since the judge's treatment of the appellant's account was a little diffuse, it was helpful to have Mr Howard's summary of it, as well as the one in the refusal letter. However, as the judge comprehensively rejected it, for reasons she gave, I can take it fairly shortly.
4. The appellant said he had become involved in politics as a member of the Chatro Shibir, or student wing of the Jamaat e-Islami party, in opposition to the governing Awami League. He mentioned an incident in 2007, as a result of which his father had told him to concentrate on his studies, and in due course sent him to this country, with a student visa issued at the end of 2009, to pursue them. In early 2010 the appellant arrived here, and eventually had leave to remain as a student till 21 December 2015. Meanwhile in 2012 he made a short visit home, to which I shall return.
5. In December 2015, before the appellant's leave ran out, he travelled to Letterkenny (Co, Donegal, in the Republic of Ireland), and stayed there till June 2016. On the 12th he arrived in Belfast by coach, to catch a ferry over to Scotland; but, as the stamp on his passport had run out, he was detained and on the 17th given removal directions for the 21st. It was not till after that that he claimed asylum for the first time; not surprisingly, his failure to do so before (see s.8 Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004) was among the judge's reasons for disbelieving him.
6. The appellant said he had returned to Bangladesh in 2012 (from February to April, as he eventually made clear) to look for his father, who was reported to have disappeared. In the course of this quest, he had phoned people who later gave his number to Awami League members. Later, on his return to this country, two men from the Awami League had rung him on his mobile here, and taunted him about his father's disappearance, threatening to deal with him in the same way. It is not clear from the papers when he got this call; but it evidently did not lead him to claim asylum, not only till after his student leave had run out, but after his six months in the Republic of Ireland, and at a point where he had already been given removal directions.
ARGUMENT
7. Mr Howard suggested that the judge had found that this appellant was a supporter of the Chatro Shibir of the Jamaat e-Islami; but, as I pointed out, the last sentence of her paragraph 23 is to the contrary: "The appellant has no profile, even if [my emphasis] I accepted that he was a supporter of the Jamaat student wing in his student days and that his father was a member of the party now". The judge however had gone on at paragraph 25 comprehensively to reject the appellant's account.
8. Mr Howard went on to refer me to the Bangladesh section of the Human Rights Watch World Report for 2015/16. At p 3/12 there is the following item:
The opposition Jamaat e-Islami party claims its activists were arrested and tortured by the police, including its Detective Branch, and says several members were killed by security forces. For instance, witnesses saw the police arrest Ahmadullah, a 22-year old student supporter of the party, on January 31 [presumably 2016] his body was found the next morning. The police claimed that he was killed in crossfire between security forces and Jamaat supporters.
9. Next Mr Howard referred me to the Home Office country information and guidance of February 2015: at p 25/26, referring to the Jamaat e-Islami, the report says "The party faces an existential threat under the AL [Awami League] government, which is pushing for its complete political ban".
CONCLUSIONS
10. There is, perhaps unfortunately, no relevant current country guidance from the Tribunal on Bangladesh. However, even there were evidence to show any general Convention risk for members of the Jamaat e-Islami, or its student wing, either from supporters of the Awami League or the security forces, which there is not, the judge not only rejected the appellant's claimed history, but expressly found he had no relevant profile. There is no basis for any reasonable likelihood of Convention persecution or ill-treatment in this case, and the appeal is dismissed.
Appeal
(a judge of the Upper Tribunal)
Decision signed: 05.11.2017