Strasbourg to rule on Rwanda migrant
Strasbourg to rule on Rwanda migrant
Human rights court says interim measures expired in February
The European Court of Human Rights has asked the UK for its response to a claim by an Iraqi asylum-seeker that sending him to Rwanda would violate his human rights.
Judges in Strasbourg have also announced that interim measures granted last June — in effect a temporary injunction blocking removals to Rwanda — expired two months ago.
The Iraqi claimant, referred to as NSK, was born in 1968. He left Iraq in April 2022, travelled to Turkey and then across Europe before crossing the English Channel by boat. Alleging that he was in danger in Iraq, he claimed asylum on arrival in the UK on 17 May.
On 6 June, NSK was told his asylum claim had been deemed inadmissible and that he would be removed to Rwanda on 14 June under an arrangement negotiated by the former home secretary Priti Patel.
NSK began judicial review proceedings but courts in the UK refused to make a temporary order stopping him and others from being put on a plane. However, interim measures were granted late on 14 June by a judge at the human rights court and the plane never took off.
We now know that the government asked on 24 June for the interim measures to be lifted. After consideration of the arguments, that request was refused by the human rights court on 1 July.
The court concluded that the material presented by the government had not satisfied it that the NSK could and would be returned to the UK if he was successful at any stage in his legal proceedings.
If the Strasbourg court were to find that his removal to Rwanda put NSK at real risk of irreparable harm while awaiting a decision on his asylum application, the judges added, his return to the UK at the conclusion of the legal proceedings would not be enough to protect against that risk.
The High Court gave judgment on claims by NSK and others on 19 December. Lord Justice Lewis and Mr Justice Swift ruled that it was lawful for the government to make arrangements for relocating asylum-seekers to Rwanda and for their asylum claims to be decided there rather than in the United Kingdom. However, the judges found that the home secretary had not properly considered the circumstances of the eight individual claimants whose cases were before the court.
For that reason, the decisions in those cases were set aside and the cases were referred back to the home secretary for her to consider afresh. Orders were formally made on 16 January quashing the decisions to remove NSK and others.
Under the interim measures, NSK was not to be removed until three weeks after the delivery of the final domestic decision in his case. That, said the court today, was the quashing order on 16 January. So the interim measures had expired on 6 February.
On 15 March, NSK lodged a new application at the Strasbourg court. He complains that his removal to Rwanda would violate his rights under article 3 of the human rights convention, which says that
No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
In particular, NSK says he would not have access to an adequate refugee status determination in Rwanda; that the United Kingdom had made no adequate assessment of whether he would in practice have effective access to a refugee status determination process there; and that people relocated to Rwanda may be at risk of “detention and treatment not in accordance with international standards should they express dissatisfaction or protest at their conditions after arrival”.
NSK argued that although the individual decisions had been quashed, the underlying article 3 issues remained live. He explained that his allegations of article 3 breaches were the subject of three grounds of appeal which would be examined in a four-day hearing scheduled to begin on 24 April.
NSK maintained that he still had victim status since he had had no acknowledgment of, or remedy for, breaches of his convention rights and remained a victim of a potential breach pending the issuance of fresh individual decisions.
The court has asked the UK government and NSK’s lawyers for written responses to two questions:
As the applicant cannot be removed to Rwanda without the home secretary reconsidering the decisions in his case, can he continue to claim to be a victim of the alleged violation within the meaning of article 34 of the convention [which permits individual applications to the court]?
If so, would his removal to Rwanda violate his rights under article 3 of the convention?
The court will give its decision in due course.