An Iraqi has lost a 13-year legal fight to convince UK authorities that he is from Syria and should be granted asylum in the UK.
The asylum seeker, who cannot be named for legal reasons and is known by the initials NI, arrived in Britain in 2013. He claimed to be a Syrian Kurd who had fled the country to avoid conscription into the YPG, or People’s Protection Units.
But according to a judgment handed down by an immigration tribunal sitting in Cardiff, immigration officials were sceptical from the start about his claim to be from the Jawadiyah district of Syria, on the border with Turkey.
A report by Sprakab, which provides language analysis services to government immigration agencies, said with a “very high degree of certainty” that he was from Iraq and that it was “very unlikely that he is from Syria”.
The report, prepared by an Iraqi born in Mosul who had also lived in Duhok, found NI spoke Bahdini Kurdish as his mother tongue, with influences of Sorani, the two dialects most commonly spoken in Iraq. He did not speak Kurmanji or use Arabic words, which are common in Syria.
NI continued to maintain that he was Syrian and unsuccessfully appealed in 2013. He made further submissions, but these were also rejected before he appealed to a higher level tribunal.
During that appeal, a report was submitted to the court by linguist Dr Kawa Morad, a British Kurd of Syrian origin who has experience interviewing Kurdish refugees.
Dr Morad found that the Kurdish NI speaks was “not consistent with his claim that he originates from Jawadiyah in Syria”. The dialect he uses is from Duhok province and the north-western area of Erbil in Iraq, said the expert.
Upper Tribunal Judge Rebecca Owens said NI “has never proffered any explanation for why his language is that of an Iraqi Kurd rather than a Syrian from Jawadiyah”.
She noted that the asylum interview was conducted in Sorani at NI's request, who said “the area we live, they were all Sorani speakers”.
“This is manifestly inconsistent with the linguistic reports which clearly state that in Syria, Kurdish Kurmanji is the dominant language,” said the judge.
“I find that he claimed to be a Syrian national on arrival because at that point Syrian nationals were being granted asylum in the UK because of the situation in Syria, and he was aware that he had a better chance of succeeding on his asylum claim if he were found to be Syrian.”
Judge Owens said that during an interview soon after he arrived in 2013, NI couldn't pronounce the name of then Syrian president Bashar Al Assad properly, nor name any tribes from Jawadiyah.
“He could be expected at that point to have a better knowledge of the country [where] he had claimed to grow up and from which he had departed from only a few months earlier,” she said.
As part of his appeal, NI produced identity documents he claimed proved he was Syrian, which he said had been obtained through an uncle living in Turkey.
Judge Owens said she had not seen the original version. The photograph on it was unclear, and there was insufficient evidence about how it had been obtained.
NI’s lawyers argued that he had severe mental health problems and that he faced inhuman or degrading treatment on return to Syria or Iraq, in violation of his rights under Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Dismissing his appeal, Judge Owens said “having considered all of the evidence in the round on the balance of probabilities, that the appellant is an Iraqi national and his deportation would not cause him harm”.
