Immigration

Asylum application based on racial attacks - failure of police to protect from attacks capable of constituting persecutionHarakal v Secretary of State for the Home Department: CA (Judge and Latham LJJ and Lloyd J): 10 May 2001The applicant, a Czech national of Roma ethnicity and a successful businessman, had been subjected by abuses and attacks from 1971 to 1998, while living in the Czech republic with his non-Roma wife and son, by skinheads who also threatened to attack the wife and son in 1998.The applicant did not report the incidents in 1998 to the police fearing that the police had been infiltrated by skinheads.His application for asylum as a refugee was refused by the secretary of state who stated, among other things, that a human rights commission established in the Czech Republic in 1998 would provide protection to him.

The special adjudicator allowed his appeal on the basis that there was sufficient evidence of persecution in his case.The Immigration Appeal Tribunal, despite accepting the finding of the special adjudicator on the evidence, allowed an appeal by the secretary of state on the basis that the applicant's evidence was subject to criticism.

The applicant appealed.Frances Webber and Patrick Lewis (instructed by Winstanley-Burgess) for the applicant.

Khawar M Qureshi (instructed by Treasury Solicitor) for the secretary of state.Held, allowing the appeal, that since the secretary of state had not challenged the finding on the evidence by the special adjudicator, and the tribunal had accepted that there had been disproportionate persecution, the tribunal had erred in law in ignoring the historical facts in the particular life of the applicant on the basis that the applicant's evidence was subject to criticism and that the protection system to be adopted by the authorities and by the human rights commission would be adequate.