Penny Muir was recently instructed in a case brought under S.35 of the Asylum & Immigration (treatment of claimants etc) Act 2004, namely the offence of failing to comply with actions that the Secretary of State requires in order to enable a travel document to be issued so that a person (normally a failed asylum seeker) can be removed. This offence is not very well known, but it appears it is used by the Home Office when, as in this case, a particular asylum seeker cannot be deported without his or her cooperation with the procedures required by the country to which he or she is being deported, for the purpose of issuing travel documents.

In Penny Muir’s case, this was an Iranian man, who had converted from Islam to Christianity, which is an offence in Iran that can be punished by execution. Understandably, her client did not wish to cooperate with his deportation, even though he had already been held in prison in immigration detention in the UK for over five years. In Penny Muir’s view, this was a scandalous situation, and even though the defence available to this charge is extremely limited, she, along with counsel instructed, worked very hard on his defence over a period of several months, having defeated an initial argument brought before the Court by the Prosecution that he had no arguable defence! During the course of this, the client became ill and, eventually, the Prosecution agreed to drop the case against him in the interests of justice. It is clear that the case shocked all those who heard about it, including the judge who presided over the matter, and he did all in his power to assist by ordering a number of psychiatric reports to be paid for by the Court.