Today, Tuesday 15th October 2019, the High Court ruled that our client was unlawfully detained for almost five months of the total 28 months that he was held in immigration detention, breaching his rights under Article 5 European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR). The Court also found that the 75 days that our client was under constant suicide watch breached his Article 8 ECHR rights to privacy.
Our client, who was 18 when he was first detained and has a history of self-harm and risk of suicide, challenged his detention on the grounds that it violated his rights under articles 3, 5 and 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights. He also challenged the adequacy of Rule 35 of the Detention Centre Rules 2001, which is the mechanism by which detainees’ medical concerns are reported by healthcare staff in the detention centre to the Home Office, and which trigger a review of the detention. This rule requires the detention centre’s medical practitioner to report the case of any detainee whose health is likely to be injuriously affected by detention, but excludes other medical professionals from the same obligation.
‘This case highlights the total inadequacy of the Home Office’s procedures for the identification of vulnerable people in immigration detention’, explains Lewis Kett, representing our client. ‘There was mounting evidence of our client’s high risk of suicide, and that detention was causing him further harm, and yet the Home Office repeatedly decided to maintain his detention. The fact that he was detained for 28 months is wholly unacceptable.’
In ruling that five months of our client’s detention was unlawful, the Court is strongly critical of the Home Office’s manner of dealing with our client’s suicide risk. The Court finds that this was clearly a chase where a Rule 35(2) report should have been issued and was not. While the Court did not go as far as declaring the Rule 35 process ultra vires for its exclusion of psychiatrists from the duty to report concerns, the Court found that there are clear failings in the management of detainees at risk of suicide in detention.
Read more: Duncan Lewis, https://is.gd/oYcyNuHome
