immigrationAlgerian civil servant seeking asylum on ground of intimidation by insurgents while working - law enforcement agencies failing to protect her - fear of persecution by non-state actors capable of giving rise to refugee statusNoune v Secretary of State for the Home Department: CA (Schiemann and Tuckey LJJ and Sir Swinton Thomas): 7 December 2000An Algerian woman working in a telegraphic department of the Algerian Government was confronted by Islamic fundamentalists who demanded that she send messages to Moscow and Tokyo from her place of work, threatening to kill her if she refused to co-operate.

Without reporting the threats to her superiors at work, since she was unsure whether any of them were sympathetic to the fundamentalists' cause, she fled to the UK and sought asylum as a refugee.

Her application was refused and the special adjudicator and the Immigration Appeal Tribunal dismissed her appeals.

She appealed.Nicholas Black QC (instructed by Glazer Delmar) for Noune.

Rhodri Thompson (instructed by Treasury Solicitor) for the Secretary of State.Held, allowing the appeal and remitting the matter to a differently constituted tribunal, that where a conscientious government worker, who was unwilling to aid insurgents in their cause against the government, was perceived by the insurgents as opposed to their cause and therefore faced persecution by them when the law enforcement agency in the home state was no longer able to protect her from the insurgents, the potential victim could turn to the international community's protection regime as a refugee within the meaning of the Convention and Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees, notwithstanding that the fear of persecution emanated from non-state actors; and that since there was nothing in the Convention which denied a perceptive minister an international protection, the same ought to apply to civil servants.