Battered wife wins right to asylum hearing

A battered wife who fears being stoned to death if she is forced to return to Pakistan yesterday won a High Court decision which could pave the way for more women in her position to claim asylum in the United Kingdom.

A judge ruled that wives rejected by their husbands for alleged adultery in such circumstances were "a social group" entitled to protection in Britain under the 1951 United Nations refugees convention.

An immigration lawyer said later that the judge's decision had widened the narrow legal definition of a social group and would have significance for other asylum seekers who could claim they were part of similar "social groups" in fear of persecution.

Acknowledging that the case raised "an undoubtedly difficult question" and signalling that his decision could add to the number of asylum seekers coming to Britain, Mr Justice Sedley said the asylum system was already "groaning under other burdens", such as bogus claimants and the "previously unimagined volume" of applicants. That called for "scrupulous attention" being given to every claim, but it could not "redefine the meaning of the convention", he said.

The judge was allowing an application by Syeda Shah, of Canning Town, east London, for her case to be considered by the Immigration Appeal Tribunal.

The tribunal itself refused the request in August last year after an adjudicator ruled that, although she had already been persecuted by her husband and there was "a reasonable expectation" that she would be again if she went back to him, she was not part of a social group entitled to asylum under the convention. The adjudicator was brought in after the Home Secretary initially refused her claim.

Quashing the appeal tribunal's decision and ordering it to hear Mrs Shah's case, Mr Justice Sedley described how Mrs Shah, who had been brought up partly in Britain, returned to her homeland as a 17-year-old to marry. She and her husband had six children - now looked after by an extended family - but she was driven out of her home "after years of violence". Arriving back in the UK she found that she was pregnant again.

The judge said that Mrs Shah "credibly feared" that if she returned to her husband's house she would be accused of conceiving the child adulterously.

If her husband denied her child's legitimacy, she would be exposed to trial under the Sharia laws, which prescribed stoning to death for adultery.

The judge warned Mrs Shah that her appeal was not bound to succeed, but she was to be judged by a test which had "a broad, humanitarian purpose".