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Ghulam Rbani v Secretary For Justice For And On Behalf Of The Director Of Immigration

Judgment Cited authorities 15 Cited in Precedent Map Related
Vincent
Judgment Date13 March 2014
Year2014
Citation(2014) 17 HKCFAR 138
Judgement NumberFACV15/2013
Subject MatterFinal Appeal (Civil)
CourtCourt of Final Appeal (Hong Kong)
FACV15/2013 GHULAM RBANI v. SECRETARY FOR JUSTICE for and on behalf of the DIRECTOR OF IMMIGRATION

FACV No. 15 of 2013

IN THE COURT OF FINAL APPEAL OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

FINAL APPEALNO. 15 OF 2013 (CIVIL)

(ON APPEAL FROM CACV NO. 267 OF 2011)

_______________________

Between :

GHULAM RBANI Plaintiff
(Appellant)
and
SECRETARY FOR JUSTICE for and on behalf of the
DIRECTOR OF IMMIGRATION		 Defendant
(Respondent)

_______________________

Before: Chief Justice Ma, Mr Justice Ribeiro PJ, Mr Justice Tang PJ, Mr Justice Bokhary NPJ and Lord Walker of Gestingthorpe NPJ
Date of Hearing: 25 February 2014
Date of Judgment: 13 March 2014

_______________________

J U D G M E N T

_______________________

Chief Justice Ma:

1. I agree with the judgment of Mr Justice Ribeiro PJ.

Mr Justice Ribeiro PJ:

2. The appellant brought proceedings against the Director of Immigration for damages for false imprisonment claiming that he had been unlawfully detained purportedly under section 32 of the Immigration Ordinance (“IO”).[1] His claim was dismissed by HH Judge Leung in the District Court[2] and his appeal against that judgment was dismissed by the Court of Appeal.[3] Leave to appeal to this Court was given by the Appeal Committee[4] on the basis that a point of law of the requisite importance arises on the appeal, namely:

“To what extent are the detention powers contained in section 32(2A) of the IO subject to an applicable principle of law barring arbitrary or unlawful detention?”

A. The factual background

3. The appellant may be described as a serial over-stayer. He is a Pakistani national and first came to Hong Kong in 1992 using a passport bearing the name “Ghulam Rubbani” and stating his date of birth as 15 April 1971. He was allowed to stay for three months but overstayed for about 10 months. He was convicted of breaching a condition of stay, fined $1,000 and repatriated to Pakistan in August 1993.

4. Using another passport, this time in the name of “Mian Ghulam Rabani”, giving 15 April 1970 as his date of birth, the appellant returned to Hong Kong in 1994. He was again permitted to stay for 3 months and overstayed for some 5 months. He was again convicted of breaching a condition of stay, fined $1,200 and repatriated to Pakistan in July 1995.

5. He returned in May 1999, this time using a passport in the name of “Ghulam Rabbani” with a 1967 date of birth. After overstaying for about 4 months, he was convicted of breaching his condition of stay and of making a false representation to an officer (during his previous visit regarding his date of birth). He received a sentence of 3 months’ imprisonment suspended for two years and was sent back to Pakistan in October 1999.

6. The appellant last entered Hong Kong on 24 September 2000 (this time using a passport bearing the name “Ghulam Rbani”, with a 1971 date of birth). He was permitted to remain as a visitor until 15 October 2000 but overstayed for some 4½ years before he was arrested by the police on 1 April 2005 for a gambling offence. He was convicted of that offence as well as of breaching his condition of stay. The suspended sentence was activated and he was sentenced to a total of 7 months’ imprisonment.

7. After serving just under five months of his sentence, he was discharged on 23 August 2005. The Director immediately placed him under administrative detention pursuant to IO section 32(2A)(a) and subsequently issued a removal order against him on 10 September 2005. That order was not served because the appellant had meanwhile lodged a claim under the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (“CAT”) against refoulement which came to the attention of the Immigration Department’s Removal Sub-Division on 12 September 2005.

8. The removal order was revoked on 15 September 2005 and the appellant was eventually released on recognizance on 7 October 2005, approximately six weeks since he was first placed under administrative detention and three weeks since revocation of the removal order. The appellant’s claim for damages for false imprisonment was brought on 11 February 2010, some 4½ years after his release. I shall return[5] to consider in greater detail the circumstances of his detention.

B. The appellant’s claim

9. As Lord Bridge of Harwich stated in R v Deputy Governor of Parkhurst Prison, Ex p Hague: “The tort of false imprisonment has two ingredients: the fact of imprisonment and the absence of lawful authority to justify it.”[6] Citing Atkin LJ for the proposition that “any restraint within defined bounds which is a restraint in fact may be an imprisonment”,[7] Lord Bridge continued:

“Thus if A imposes on B a restraint within defined bounds and is sued by B for false imprisonment, the action will succeed or fail according to whether or not A can justify the restraint imposed on B as lawful.”[8]

10. There is no dispute that the period of the appellant’s confinement under executive detention constituted a period of imprisonment. The question is therefore whether the Director (who bears the burden[9]) can justify such detention as lawful.

11. Mr Philip Dykes SC[10] advances five arguments for contending that the Director is unable to provide such justification. Two involve reliance on constitutional guarantees and the other three bear on the scope and proper exercise of the statutory power of detention as a matter of public law forming part of the common law.

12. In making his constitutional arguments, Mr Dykes submits that the detention was unlawful in that it violated Article 5(1) of the Bill of Rights (“BOR Art 5(1)”) and/or Article 28 of the Basic Law (“BL Art 28”) made applicable to the appellant by Article 41 of the Basic Law (“BL Art 41”). Those Articles are set out below.[11]

13. The powers of detention relied on by the Director are contained in IO section 32,[12] being powers to detain pending a decision on whether to make a removal order (section 32(2A)); and pending removal where a removal order has been made (section 32(3A)).

14. In his public law argument, Mr Dykes submits that the Director’s purported exercise of the powers conferred by those sections in the present case was flawed and unlawful for three inter-related reasons, namely:

(a) that applying the Hardial Singh principles,[13] the Director[14] could not lawfully continue to detain the appellant after it had become clear that his intended removal from Hong Kong could not be achieved within the time limits for detention laid down in section 32(2A) or otherwise within a reasonable time (“the Hardial Singh ground”);

(b) that once the removal order was revoked on 15 September 2005, there was no legal basis for the continued exercise of the power (“the no legal basis ground”); and

(c) that at the time of exercising the power, the Director had not published any statement of policy identifying criteria justifying detention under section 32 (“the lack of a policy ground”).

15. The first two of the abovementioned grounds involve the complaint that the duration of the appellant’s detention was excessive and cannot fully be justified, while the third ground involves the contention that the Director’s lack of a published policy tainted the entire period of detention.

16. It is Mr Dykes’s argument that on one or more of the aforesaid grounds, the detention was rendered unlawful, not merely as a matter of public law, but so as to constitute the tort of false imprisonment entitling the appellant to damages, this being a proposition which will also require examination.[15]

17. As Lord Brown of Eaton-Under-Heywood JSC pointed out,[16] the Hardial Singh principles, as applied in a succession of later cases, may be regarded as more favourable to detainees than the Strasbourg jurisprudence[17] requires. In like vein, Mr Dykes accepts that if his argument based on public law principles succeeds, the constitutional grounds would add nothing to the result. The focus of the argument has therefore been on the common law and public law principles and I shall deal with them first, before considering the constitutional arguments raised.

C. The right at common law

18. The right to personal freedom and the concomitant right to be protected from arbitrary arrest or detention form part of the bedrock of the common law. Referring to an argument advanced by one of the parties in A andOthers v Secretary of State for the Home Department,[18]Lord Bingham of Cornhill commented:

“In urging the fundamental importance of the right to personal freedom ... the appellants were able to draw on the long libertarian tradition of English law, dating back to chapter 39 of Magna Carta 1215, given effect in the ancient remedy of habeas corpus, declared in the Petition of Right 1628, upheld in a series of landmark decisions down the centuries and embodied in the substance and procedure of the law to our own day.”

19. As Lord Bridge emphasised in Ex p Khawaja, this right is of particular importance where an individual is subjected to executive detention:

“My Lords, we should, I submit, regard with extreme jealousy any claim by the executive to imprison a citizen without trial and allow it only if it is clearly justified by the statutory language relied on. The fact that, in the case we are considering, detention is preliminary and incidental to expulsion from the country in my view strengthens rather than weakens the case for a robust exercise of the judicial function in safeguarding the citizen's rights.”[19]

20. These fundamental values apply with equal vigour in Hong Kong, safeguarded by, among other means, the writ of habeas corpus.[20] Giving the advice of the Privy Council in an appeal from Hong Kong,[21] Lord Browne-Wilkinson endorsed Lord Bridge’s...

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