R (on the application of Saber) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2007] UKHL 57, [2007] All ER (D) 169 (Dec)
House of Lords
Lord Bingham, Lord Hope, Lord Rodger, Baroness Hale and Lord Brown
12 December 2007
Mungo Bovey QC and Simon Collins (instructed by Drummond Millar LLP) for the appellant.
Ailsa Carmichael (instructed by the Office of the Solicitor to the Advocate General for ) for the secretary of state.
The current situation in the relevant country will always be relevant to the question whether a person’s removal from the will be contrary to its international obligation.
The appellant was a Kurdish citizen of . He entered the in July 2000 and claimed asylum. At that time, was still ruled by Saddam Hussein. A Kurdish autonomous region existed in , but relations between the two main Kurdish political factions were extremely volatile and often descended into armed conflict. Agents of the Iraqi state were also known to operate in the area.
