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	England and Wales High Court (Administrative Court) Decisions
You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> England and Wales High Court (Administrative Court) Decisions >> Al-Tamimi, R (on the application of) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2007] EWHC 1962 (Admin) (15 May 2007) URL: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2007/1962.html Cite as: [2007] EWHC 1962 (Admin)

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IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
THE ADMINISTRATIVE COURT

		Royal Courts of Justice Strand London WC2A 2LL
		15th May 2007

1. MR JUSTICE LANGSTAFF: This is a renewed application for permission to apply for judicial review. It was refused by Sullivan J on 26th October 2006. The applicant wishes to become a nationalised Briton. He has indefinite leave to remain. He is Iraqi and has been granted asylum. His claim for naturalisation was rejected by the Secretary of State, not by the exercise of his discretion but because the law required the Secretary of State to be satisfied that the applicant was of good character.
2. The decision which the Secretary of State reached, which is the subject of this claim, was one made on 16th May 2006. He refused the application for naturalisation because he was not satisfied of good character. He added:

"This is because of your past relationship with the Directorate of General Intelligence (the DGI)."

That was a reason which the Secretary of State in subsequent correspondence refused to expand on. He did not say what precise relationship there was, nor did he say what he understood by good character. However, in the reasons for refusal attached to the acknowledgment of service on 22nd September 2006, the Secretary of State finally said more about his reasons. In paragraph 18, he set out six matters. They said what he had been told by government agencies, that was that the applicant was an agent of the DGI and had been since at least 1999 and might well still be and that, despite being told to stop his activities in relationship to the DGI, he had continued with them.

3. He vigorously disputes those facts. He tells me that he can show that each one of them is not true. However, he cannot in the present proceedings challenge directly that those matters were put before the Secretary of State in May 2006 and were the matters of fact which the Secretary of State relied on to make his decision. He cannot succeed in showing that the decision of the Secretary of State should be reviewed unless he can show that there was an error about the making of the decision rather than the decision itself. He cannot in my view show that, on the basis of what he was told, the Secretary of State made a mistake of law in deciding that he was not satisfied that the applicant was of good character.
4. For the sake of the applicant I make it clear in this short judgment that the Secretary of State has said in court that he does not suggest that he, the applicant, is any threat to national security. Secondly, the decision that the Secretary of State took was not that the applicant was of bad character but that he could not be satisfied that he was of good character and there is a difference. The applicant tells me that the decision is embarassing to him and to his honour. He says that he is in a position to show the Secretary of State that the information he was given is wrong. However, that cannot affect whether the decision of 16th May was or was not a correctly made decision on the information at the time and since there is no material before me to show that it was not, and since I regard it as unarguable that if the facts were true the Secretary of State was entitled not to be satisfied of a requirement for naturalisation, I have no alternative but to dismiss this claim. It does not prevent the applicant from pursuing issues of naturalisation in the future if he should choose to do so but it is not my position to give him any advice as to that.