A migrant was spared deportation because of his tattoos. Reports from the UK immigration courts show how an initial Home Office decisionâthat he could safely be returned to the Kurdish-controlled part of Iraqâwas overturned because this risked his inhumane treatment under the terms of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
The manâs asylum claim began, he says, when his father and uncle threatened to kill him over some âbody art,â which they say âdeviated from the principles of Islam.â Initial efforts to forcibly remove the tattoos by burning escalated into an alleged plot to carry out an âhonour killing.â According to court documents, the manâreferred to as âAAââwas saved when his brother retrieved his passport from the family home and placed him on a flight out of Iraq.
For the Home Office, the issue was not the veracity of the story, but whether AA could re-enter his home part of Iraq while avoiding his dangerous male relatives. Now an immigration judge has ruled this would not be possible, since AA has no identity documents separate from his passport to help him get through local checkpoints. Secondly, AA has claimed that his father and uncleâs links to their homelandâs ruling Patriotic Union of Kurdistan make it impossible for him to live and travel safely in the territory.
The Home Officeâat least tenuously connected to the British electorateâwas supported in overruling AAâs argument by a first tier tribunal. Now, however, the ECHR-based appeal was granted by Judge Makesh Joshi, who also found that AAâs mother and/or brother would be endangered if they were asked to supply their relatives with suitable travel documents. (He has not ruledâyetâwhether the duo would also qualify for asylum in Britain should they request it.)
Whatever the merits of this case, its credibility is undermined by a wider crisis of confidence in the system, where whether a migrant joined a terror group or has strong preferences in chicken nuggets can prompt soft immigration judges to make questionable decisions.
