C v Secretary of State for the Home Department

At an interview with the Security Service , he said that he had left Egypt in 1999. He repeated that he had been to Syria. He said that he had stayed at the Yarmuk Refugee Camp outside Damascus. On this occasion, he said that he had left Syria � after a short while � and then he repeated that he had come to the United Kingdom via Turkey, and that he knew no-one here before he arrived.

In fact, neither of those accounts was true, and indeed the truth was put to him by Security Service officers in the same interview. He was in Eire from June 1998. He was arrested there, with other terrorist suspects, in a disruptive operation at the beginning of 2000. Before he claimed asylum in the United Kingdom, he had been here on at least one previous occasion in order to have a discussion with Hani Al-Seba�i, a person to whom we shall make more reference later.

�� Yes �, he said and produced a photocopied newspaper cutting (Al-Quds Al-�Arabi 26 th Feb 1999), with a list of names of those people wanted in the returnees from Albania case. His name (no 68 I think) was listed as OTR. He had never been in Albania and knew for a fact that many of the other people listed were innocent. However, two of his brothers were in jail already. Many of those who attended his mosque in Mina Al-Qamh were regularly pulled in for interrogation and he was wanted for his association with these people.�

As we have said, the decisions against which C presently appeals were made on 18 th December 2001. The previous day, the Secretary of State had certified under section 33 of the 2001 Act that C was not entitled to the protection of Article 33(1) of the Refugee Convention, because Article 1(F) or Article 3(2) applies to him.

The stated grounds for the certification under section 33 and also under section 21 of the 2001 Act are as follows: