Court upholds deportation of woman and daughters

A LENGTHY legal battle by a woman to prevent the deportation of herself and her two daughters on grounds of fear of female genital mutilation in Nigeria ended in failure at the High Court yesterday when it upheld the deportation orders.

The court's decision means Pamela Izevbekhai, who was arrested in Sligo more than two years ago for deportation after she came out of hiding to see her daughters, faces imminent deportation. She must present for deportation at a date to be decided by the Minister for Justice.

However, she still has a chance to remain in the State if the Minister grants her application for "subsidiary protection".

Ms Izevbekhai and her daughters, Naomi (7) and Jemima (5), were in court yesterday when Mr Justice Kevin Feeney refused to grant her counsel, Mel Christle SC, the certificate necessary for her to bring an appeal to the Supreme Court against the judge's decision in January upholding the orders.

However, the judge refused an application by the Minister to award costs of the various legal applications against Ms Izevbekhai and instead directed each side to pay their own costs. Mr Justice Feeney said the case had raised substantial issues for determination and the Minister had been represented by two senior counsel to deal with those issues.

Mr Christle said Ms Izevbekhai received €108 weekly in payments from the State for herself and her daughters and there was no point in making cost orders against them.

Last January, the judge dismissed Ms Izevbekhai's challenge to the deportation orders signed by the then minister for justice in November 2005. Ms Izevbekhai had said she had already lost a baby daughter as a result of the "torture" of female genital mutilation in Nigeria and feared for the lives of her other two daughters if the family is deported.

In January 2006, the court ordered her release from Mountjoy Prison. She was brought there after she was arrested in Sligo, having spent five weeks in hiding. Her daughters were taken into care in December 2005 when their mother disappeared after the orders were issued.

In the High Court in November 2006, Mr Justice Liam McKechnie granted Ms Izevbekhai leave to challenge the deportation orders after finding she had substantial grounds to bring the challenge.

Ms Izevbekhai had said she had left Nigeria in January 2005 because she was in fear for her life and particularly for the lives of her infant daughter. Her husband's family actively practised the ritual circumcision of female children, a form of abuse known as female genital mutilation, she said.

Her fear was founded on direct threats received from her husband's family and also on the past experience of losing a daughter to the practice, she said. Her first daughter, Elizabeth, died at 17 months from blood loss, which the attending doctor had described as being possibly the result of traditional female circumcision, which he diagnosed as having been performed on the baby.

She had not left Nigeria, where her husband and son continue to live, to better her economic circumstances and her life there was not a deprived one, she added.

Mr Justice Feeney dismissed arguments that the Minister had breached provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights and the Constitution in relation to how he had scrutinised the applicants' cases.

He found the Minister's decision "necessarily involved" his considering and concluding there were no substantial grounds for believing the applicants would be in danger of being subjected to "torture" within the meaning of section 4 of the Criminal Justice (UN Convention Against Torture) Act, 2000.