Mr EU

Mr EU, an Iranian national, arrived at Heathrow Airport in December 2008. He approached an Immigration Officer on duty at Immigration Control and stated that he did not have a passport and claimed asylum.

Mr EU told the immigration authorities that he had fled from Iran, travelling on foot and by lorry to Turkey where a family member paid an agent €10,000 to arrange his journey to the UK.

Mr EU was taken to Heathrow Police Station and interviewed under caution in the presence of his solicitor and an interpreter. He was charged with failing to produce an immigration document contrary to section 2(1) of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004.

In January 2009, Mr EU pleaded guilty at Uxbridge Magistrates’ Court and was sentenced to 12 weeks’ imprisonment.

Because Mr EU pleaded guilty in Magistrates’ Court he was not entitled to appeal against his conviction.

Mr EU’s Home Office Screening Interview was conducted on the day of his arrival in the UK, but he did not have his substantive asylum interview until July 2013.

He was subsequently granted asylum with five years’ leave to remain on the basis that he was an active member of the banned political party, the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI).

Mr EU fled Iran when he learned that a KDPI colleague had been arrested and tortured and was likely to have given his name to the authorities. While Mr EU was in hiding before leaving Iran, his father was detained and tortured in an attempt to find out where he was.

Mr EU applied to the CCRC for a review of his case in April 2014.

Following review, the CCRC concluded that Mr EU had a statutory defence to the charge on which he was convicted available to him under section 2(4)(c) of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants) Act 2004, namely a “reasonable excuse” for not producing a genuine immigration document.

The legal advice provided to Mr EU deprived him of that available defence. On the evidence now available it was probable that the defence would have succeeded and, as a result, there was a real possibility that the Crown Court would set aside Mr EU’s guilty plea and conclude that in all the circumstances it should not uphold the conviction.

The CCRC referred the conviction in March 2015.

The Crown Court quashed the conviction in December 2015.