R (Zafar) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2016] EWHC 1217 (Admin) (25 May 2016)

High Court strikes down unfair decision in DFT of vulnerable victim of torture in R (Zafar) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2016] EWHC 1217 (Admin)

In the first judgment of its kind since the suspension of the Detained Fast Track on 2 July 2015, the High Court struck down the Home Secretary’s refusal and certification of an asylum claim which was made in the structurally unfair and unjust Detained Fast Track (DFT) and ordered the Home Secretary to remake the decision afresh without regard to material obtained in the unfair process. The High Court also directed the Home Secretary to pay substantial damages for falsely imprisoning the Claimant, a vulnerable victim of torture, for 213 days as a result of subjecting him to an unlawful detained fast track asylum process and seeking to return him to Pakistan without giving him the opportunity to have his asylum claim fairly determined.

The Claimant was represented by Shu Shin Luh of Garden Court’s Public Law and Civil Liberties teams and Ahmed Aydeed at Duncan Lewis Solicitors of Duncan Lewis Solicitors. In a separate settlement obtained in March 2016, the same legal team also secured a similar settlement for a vulnerable female victim of torture before trial.

Find full details of this case on Bailii’s website here.