Welcome to the Asylum

by Richard Pendlebury, Daily Mail, May 29, 2004

Mrs Giorgadze is a large, sombre woman with the kind of sob story which makes one hesitate to pat her sympathetically on the shoulder. Her husband, Igor, is an ex-KGB colonel of cold-blooded ambition who became Georgia's State security Minister following a coup d'etat. Then he apparentlyy overstepped the mark by masterminding two assassination attempts on the country's new president.

As a result, Mr Giorgadze has an Interpol arrest warrant for terrorism offences against his name and is believed to have escaped to comfortable exile in a sympathetic Russia. Fifteen-hundred miles to the west, in Room 12 in a building in Central London, his wife's lawyer is arguing that, because of this, Britain should give Mrs Giorgadze political asylum. If deported - and the Home Office and an independent adjudicator have both previously rejected her asylum claim, - she says she will be in danger not only from her husband's political enemies but of killing herself, as a result of 'post-traumatic stress'.

This colourful story is presented by the lawyer in a matter-of-fact monotone barely audible above the hum of the air-conditioning. At the rear of the court, a solicitor waiting for the next appeal case has already been lulled into a gentle sleep. He begins to snore and the soft rasping is stopped only when his client, who claims to be the endangered son of a high-ranking official in the reviled former communist government of Afghanistan, nudges him in the ribs.

Room 12 in Field House, Fetter Lane, is the home of the Immigration Appeal Tribunal (IAT), heart of the asylum appeal industry which costs the British taxpayer some £100 million each year. Amid this soporific atmosphere, one can trace the high watermark of obfuscation, circumlocution, dishonesty and what one official here bluntly described as plain 'cock-ups' bedevil Britain's overheated asylum process.

Many years and tens of thousands of pounds in Legal Aid, court time and income support can be spent before a claimant even reaches Field House. First, the asylum seeker must negotiate a number of stages which, on close inspection, seem not so much exacting tests as expensive rituals, beginning with the intitial claim. The credibility of this is assessed by Home Office officials before a judgement is made in the name of the Home Secretary. Rejected? Then the individual can appeal. This will be heard by one of Britain's 300 Immigration Adjudicators who work for the Immigration Appellate Authority (IAA).

But even failure at this juncture doesn't mean the end of the matter and a swift return home. Far from it. A new appeal can be lodged against te adjudicator's 'determination'. If granted, this would be heard by a panel of the Immigration Appeal Tribunal, the IAT's second tier.

During this process, an asylum seeker is not allowed to work. His or her family is entitled to healthcare, accomodation, subsistence support and education under the auspices of the National Asylum Support Service and other government agencies. This week the Home Office boasted of a dramatic fall in asylum applications - a trend which, it must be said, is hardly reflected in the latest Field House statistics.

In the past year, there were 33,000 applications for permission to appeal against the adjudicator's determination on a point of law. Only 2000 determinations were overturned, a ratio which Government has admitted points to a mass abuse of the system. Field House dealt with more than twice as many appeals in 2003 than it did the previous year. The Government is pushing through legislation which it says will streamline the system - and there is no question it is needed.

After several days observing the bizarre cases passing through the hearing rooms here, it is clear that failure, waste and incompetence are rife at every level. I even came across three apparently straight-forward claims which, for no good reason, were now in their tenth year of legal argument. Little wonder the rare visit of a journalist to Field House was greeting with caution and, in one courtroom, something akin to alarm; a brief light was being shone into a normally undisturbed corner and much of what is brought before the panels at Field House does not comfortablybear such public examination.

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"How is your client's English?" the Tribunal Chairman asks an appelant's lawyer. "Not good, sir," is the answer. "Not after he has been here for ten years?" the Chairman says, surprised. Another £30-an-hour translator will be required.

The client, Suleyman Colokoglu, is a Turkish Kurd whose case highlights how long delays in the process can work to a rejected asylum seeker's advantage. His claim that he would be persecuted if he returned home has already been dismissed by the Home Office and an Immigration Adjudicator. But because he has managed to stay in Britain long and subsequently have his wife and family join him, the laws passed years after his arrival mean he has a very good chance of asylum being granted. Mr Colukoglu arrived a decade ago in 1994. In 1998 this Government passed the Human Rights Act, Article 8 of which enshrines 'Respect for private and family life'.

"Both your representative and the Home Office representative agree that the adjudicator did not consider Article 8 of the Human Rights Act in your case," the chairmanm tells the appelant through the translator. In short, Mr Colukoglu should be allowed to stay because of the family life he now has here. But such an argument was probably 'unnecessary' the Chairman acknowledged, as Mr Colukoglu had also applied for indefinite leave to remain under the asylum amnesty announched last year by Home Secretary David Blunkett, in order to clear the enormous backlog.

His case is 'remitted' - a word which rings frequently throughout Field House. It means it will be passed back down the line for yet another adjudicator to assess; this will probably add another 12 monts to the legally aided litigation. How often can this happen in a case?

"There is no statutory limit," says an IAA spokesman.

In a court across the corridor Myron Komarnytsky, a former policeman in the Ukraine, appeals against his asylum refusals. He claims that he was part of an anti-corruption unit, members of which were killed by the organised crime gangs they were fighting; his life would have been in danger if he had remained in the Ukraine.

One might find it odd that a law enforcement officer of a country which is part of the Allied Coalition in Iraq is applying for asylum in the UK. Indeed, the Home Office argues that shortly before he arrived, Mr Komarnytsky's wife left the Ukrain3e to come to the UK as a student. he has simply come to join her. The case is remitted back to stage two of the asylum process.

In Room 82, a full-scale hearing is under way. 'M.A' - an order was made that he should not be named - is a Sri Lankan asylum seeker. When he first arrived in the UK he said he was an ordinary citizen who had been abused by the Sri Lankan security forces. His appeal was rejected.

Now he has a totally new account of his life back home; he was in fact a political officer in the Tamil Tiger terrorist group and would be in grave danger for his political beliefs if deported. When called to the witness stand, the alleged guerilla fighter, a heavily built man in his 30's, begins to sob uncontrollably, dabbing his eyes with tissue paper.

"What is the matter?" the Tribunal Chairman asks him, not a little icily.

"I have a bad pain and because of courts I do not sleep at night," the appellant sniffs.

"Were you tearful at the previous hearing?" the Chairman inquires.

"I did not know anything about the procedures when I came to this country. When I came here i said what I was told to say," M.A. wails. The Home Office says M.A. had admitted ly8ing in his first account.

On the second day of this latest hearing, with five lawyers, two expert witnesses, a translator and full panel sitting, the case grinds to a half over a point of law. And yes, you've guessed it. It is remitted.

Meanwhile, upstairs, a Russian army draft dodger has arrived for his hearing. His claim for asylum is based on what the court hears is the 'narrow' reason that Russian prisons are unpleasant and imprison-ment for avoiding conscription would be his fate if he goes back. Having changed his London address without informing his solicitor, the man has no representation. The case had to be adjourned.

Next door, two Kosovan men are appealing against earlier decisions to refuse them asylum on the basis that they have 'family life' here.

When the Mail sits in on the case held in open court, I am approached by the usher demanding to know who I am. He has been alerted by a colleague that I am in the building and tells me I can read the note that he has prepared to pass to the Tribunal Chairman:"Madam, I must warn you that a journalist is present." Along the corridor, a Jamaican national is appealing against a Home Office deportation order.

Hopeton James, 37, is a convicted crack cocaine dealer. He arrived in Britain in 1992, married an Englishwoman a year later, which allowed him leave to remain, but was arrested and convicted of serious drgs offences shortly afterwards. His marriage broke down while he was serving a four-year prison sen-tence, but a series of administrative blunders means that he has been able to remain in the country. The judge at his trial neglected to pursue the formality of having him thrown out of Briain at the end of his sentence and the Home Office representative at the appeal admitted: "In this case it was quite clearly a Home Office error not to have served the appropriate papers in the normal time. The Secretary of State is questioning his immigration status and shortly before he was released from prison he was informed of this."

Since then he has served another prison sentence, but has not been in trouble since 1998, during which time he fathered a child by another woman. His barrister told the hearing: "Mr James has shown during the past five years that he is no longer a threat to British society."

The tribunal reserves its judgement to a later date and Mr James saunters out of Field House and back to his blameless life in Britain to which, by an reasonable standard, he should not be entitled.

In Court 8, something quite extraordinary has happened. Amid this flurry of remittals, Suleyman Uston, another Turkish Kurd, has actually had his appeal dismissed. The handling of his case, a Home Office official later admits to me, is a classic 'cock-up'

Mr Uston has been in the UK for ten years, having arrived as an 18-year-old. His claim that he wa a Kurdish political activist and was entitled to asylum had been rejected by the Home Office and an Immigration Adjudicator. He was granted leave to appeal as long ago as 1999, but the matter was dealt with only this week, when Judge Nicholas Ainley, the chairman of the tribunal, decided Mr Uston's story beggared belief.

Mr Uston had said that a brother could not appear to give testimony to his story because he was worried that it might have a detrimental effect on his own asylum claim. Judge Ainley exploded: "If I were being sent back to torture and death I would not be worried little niceties like that."

What undoubtedly helped sink Mr Uston's case was information about another brother who had come to the UK, had his asylum claim rejected and returned to Turkey. Far from being tortured by the security forces, he was now in the Turkish army training to be a mejber of its elite commando unit. Mr Uston's lawyer made the feeble case that because he had been in the UK so long, his return would cause him to suffer all the more attention. The judge was having none of this and the appeal was dismissed. However, if Mr Uston so wishes, he can, like 3000 other faily asylum seekers in 2003, lodge a judicial review in the High Court, in a further attempt to remain legally.

One in four of all judicial reviews in the High Court in the past year was lodged for this purpose and funded almost entirely by taxpayer's. Back in Court 12, Mrs Giorgadze, who arrived in the UK in 2001, was having her case remitted. Her lawyer had argued that the recent overthrow of Georgia's President Eduard Shevardnadze, the man whom her husband alledgedly tried to kill, had made no difference to the risk against them. "For Georgia, it is not a new dawn but a new dusk," she claimed. A dusk, if it is such, to which Mr Giorgadze has undoubtedly contributed not a little gloom. His wife's asy,um appeal, if successful, will mean that Mr Giorgadze has a potential future bolthole in London if things get too hot in the East.

Meanwhile, Mrs Giorgadze and thousands of others more, or even less, deserving than she - and their lawers - continue to bathe in the seemingly perpetual sunshine of Britain's arcane asylum system.

True reform can't come soon enough.

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