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Our Civil Liberties and Human Rights team assisted client to regain his leave to remain and secure significant damages.

Our client, an Iranian national, who had lived on and off in the UK lawfully since 1970, first came to our attention in June 2019 in Harmondsworth Immigration Removal Centre. He had been detained since May, was facing removal to Iran and his application to remain in the UK on article 8 human rights grounds had been refused. It transpired that he was over 60 years old, had British children and grandchildren in the UK and had been granted Indefinite Leave to Remain in 2001. He had previously worked in business, education and journalism. In February 2015 he had been sentenced to 8 months for an offence and as a result of the aggregation of a previous sentence of 18 weeks, was served with a deportation order. He was recorded as suffering from depression. He did not manage to obtain legal advice in prison and so did not appeal his deportation. His Indefinite Leave to Remain was therefore revoked. At the end of his sentence, he remained in prison but no steps were taken to remove him to Iran and he remained in prison until November 2016, when he was released on immigration bail. This was despite the Home Office being informed by the prison that the client’s mental health was deteriorating and the Independent Monitoring Board writing to them requesting reasons for the delay. No details of the risk assessment which assessed him as being unsuitable for transfer to a detention centre were provided.

After he was released in November 2016, the Home Office notes recorded that the client was not currently removable. Even so he was re-detained in May 2019, although by then he was over 60 and met the criteria of a level 3 Adult at Risk in detention and only to be detained in rare circumstances. Duncan Lewis were initially instructed to apply for bail, which was granted at the end of June 2016, and appeal the refusal of the human rights application. The appeal was successful in March 2020 but the Home Office applied twice, first to the First-tier and then the Upper Tribunal for permission to appeal the decision and were refused on both occasions.

The Home Office had deferred responses to the pre-action correspondence regarding the lawfulness of the two periods of the client’s detention until the appeal was resolved. The civil claim was issued in January 2021 and settled recently for very significant damages.


Representation: Immigration and Civil Liberties directors Nazia Khan and Zofia Duszynska, and solicitor Iffat Mirza (no longer with the firm) acted for the client, instructing Justine Fisher, now of 36 Group Chambers.