Case No. UKUT-00376-(IAC)

refusal to grant her claim for asylum. 2. The appellant is an Iranian citizen. She held a senior role in a women’s prison under the control of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in which political prisoners were detained and tortured. In 2009 she, her husband and her young child left Iran clandestinely with the help of an agent. Having become separated from her husband, the appellant arrived in the United Kingdom with her child in September 2009 and claimed asylum. It transpired that her husband had made his way to Turkey but had been forcibly returned from there to Iran , where he was detained and tortured over a period of months. On his release he subsequently made his way to the United Kingdom , arriving in December 2010, when he too claimed asylum. 3. The respondent refused each of the applications, giving reasons for doing so in the appellant’s case by letter dated 2 October 2012. In that letter the respondent explained her conclusion that the appellant was to be excluded from the protection of the Refugee Convention upon the grounds set out in a rticle 1F(a), namely that there were serious grounds for considering that she had committed a crime against humanity, and her consequential certification under section 55 of the Immigration Asylum and Nationality Act 2006 that she was not entitled to the protection of a rticle 33 paragraph 1 of the Refugee Convention. For the same reasons she concluded that the appellant did not qualify for protection under the Qualification Directive. The appellant, her child and her husband all appealed against the respondent’s decisions and their linked cases were heard together before the First-tier Tribunal on 28 April 2014. 4. In its determination , the First-tier Tribunal upheld the respondent’s decision to exclude the appellant from protection under the Refugee Convention and the Qualification Directive and in doing so rejected the appellant’s claim that she was excluded from criminal responsibility on account of having acted under duress. However, by concession it allowed the appellant’s appeal on human rights grounds on the basis that she would be at real risk of ill treatment on return to Iran . The appeals of the appellant’s husband and her child were each allowed on both asylum and human rights grounds. 5. After permission to appeal to the Upper Tribunal was refused the appellant sought Judicial Review, which was granted with the following observations: “The Grounds for seeking Judicial Review are reasonably arguable. Furthermore, a point of principle of general importance is at issue, namely the proper burden of proof when an applicant for refugee status claims that she should not be re garded as complicit in a crime against humanity because of duress (and, more specifically, whether it is for her to show that she could not have avoided the duress by , for instance, resigning from her post, or whether it is for the SSHD to show that this was a course that had been open to her).” 6. By determination dated 19 December 2015, Deputy Upper Tribunal Judge Chamberlain held that the decision of the First-tier Tribunal involved the making of an error on a point of law, as its finding that the appellant could have left the prison service “without serious difficulty” was inadequately reasoned and not supported by evidence before it. The decision on the appellant’s appeal was ordered to be remade with the original findings and decision in relation to exclusion from protection under the Refugee Convention and the Qualification Directive (paragraphs [55] to [65]) being set aside. The remaining findings and decisions of the First-tier Tribunal were preserved. The h istory of the a ppellant’s i nvolvement with the Iranian Revolutionar y Guard Corps 7. The evidence available on this matter comprised the content of the appellant’s screening interview dated 15 September 2009, the content of her asylum interview dated 23 October 2009, the content of her statement dated 27 April 2014, the content of her supplementary statement dated 26 May 2016 and the oral testimony which he gave before us. With one possibly significant exception , to which we will return later, the appellant has been broadly consistent in the account which she has given throughout. 8. From these sources an accepted account of the appellant’s life in Iran can be distilled. As a teenager , and after her two older brothers were sent to war , she began working for the Basij (a volunteer organisation for young Iranians subordinate to the Revolutionary Guards) . In this capacity she attended to fairly menial tasks in her local mosque whilst still at school and thereafter, whilst studying at University, provided assistance to the mosque in other ways , such as bookkeeping. She obtained a degree and was then referred by her mosque to the personnel d epartment of the Revolutionary Guard. In due course, in her mid-twenties , she was invited for an interview and offered a position as a prison guard in a women’s prison. She was given to understand that the prisoners were political prisoners who attempted to mislead others with philosophy and writings and were in prison because of the danger which they posed to other members of society. After discussion with a senior member of her mosque she decided to accept the position, understanding that she might be able to help rehabilitate those in prison and through her belief in the Revolution might be able to help them back to the right way of thinking by bringing them back to Islam and the Hezbollah way. 9. The prison at which the appellant commenced work was operated by the Revolutionary Guard Corps and contained between 150-260 female inmates. It was a temporary detention facility, known by number rather than name and had no official address. Correspondence was brought to and taken from the prison by the Revolutionary Guard’s own courier service. Within the prison there was a separate section controlled by the Hefazat -e Etelaat -e Sepah Pasderan - the Intelligence Service of the Revolutionary Guard. Certain prisoners were selected for transfer to that section for interrogation achieved by means of torture. Part of the appellant’s function as a guard was to participate in the physical process of transferring these prisoners. 10. After the appellant’s child was born she took maternity leave for a period of nine months. After that she remained off work for a period of two years having been diagnosed with depression which she attributed to the work which she did and the effect that it had upon her. 11. Towards the end of 2007, by which time she been employed at the prison for over ten years , the appellant was promoted to a senior post with a staff of around 12 other guards under her command. 12. She had responsibility for arranging the transfer of inmates from the general area of the woman’s prison to the section controlled by the Intelligence Service. A list of the inmates to be sent for interrogation would be provided to the governor who would in turn pass it to the appellant. The appellant would personally arrange the transfer of the named prisoners or instruct members of her staff to do so. 13. Prisoners transferred for interrogation were never returned to the general section of the prison. In evidence before us the appellant was coy in part about the fate of these individuals. She explained that she did not know whether they were transferred on to other prisons or what became of them. In her asylum interview though she explained that the section was where people were taken to get the last information out of them and within the prison it was known as : “the end of the line”. When asked at interview what she meant by that she explained that : “ normally the y wouldn’t be alive after that ” . 14. Having expressed that reservation about the appellant’s evidence , it is fair to recognise that from her screening interview onwards she has explained that prisoners were tortured and beaten. Consistently with this, while stating that she had never been in that section, in giving evidence before us she accepted straightforwardly that her understanding was that the prisoners who were sent there were tortured. 15. The appellant continued in her employment until 2009 when a relative was brought to her prison having been arrested at a demonstration. Her relative was placed in solitary confinement and the appellant’s understanding was that her relative was to be transferred to the section controlled by the Intelligence Service. After discussion with other family members the appellant arranged for her relative to be transferred to hospital from where they arranged for her relative to escape. Having paid a significant sum of money to an agent to provide assistance the family then left Iran . 16. From the date of her screening interview onwards the appellant has maintained that she was required to sign a contract of employment on taking up her position at the prison. At that time she explained that it was not possible to resign, she could not leave unless fired, she could not choose to leave and that she was sworn to secrecy. In her April 2014 statement she explained that when she signed her contract of employment she was told that she had to continue to work there until her retirement, or until her term of service had been completed, unless they transferred her elsewhere. She was not aware of anyone else ever leaving their post at the prison in any other circumstances. She said that she was quite sure that if she left she would have had a serious problem with the Revolutionary Guard. She thought that if she had asked to leave this would raise suspicions and she would have been suspected of having sold out or having passed on secret information about the prison. She explained that if she had left without permission she would have been treated as a traitor, imprisoned, tortured and perhaps raped. 17. In the appellant’s supplementary statement of May 2016, she stated that her term of service was twenty five years and that this was the period w hich she would have required to complete before being allowed to retire. She claimed t hat this was the normal period which women had to complete before they could leave their job or retire. It was a longer period for men. The appellant also claimed that it would have been possible for her to apply for early retirement after twenty years’ service. The r espondent’s o