MOHAMED HUSSEIN v. THE NETHERLANDS
Inadmissible
Alvina Gyulumyan;Johannes Silvis;Josep Casadevall;Luis López Guerra
1. The applicant, Mr Saleh Mohamed Hussein, claims that he is a Somali national, who was born in 1986 and is currently residing in the Netherlands. He was represented before the Court by Mr J.W.F. Noot, a lawyer practising in Dordrecht. 2. The Dutch Government (“the Government”) were represented by their Agent, Mr R.A.A. Böcker, and Deputy Agent, Ms L. Egmond, of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 3. The facts of the case, as submitted by the parties, may be summarised as follows. 4. The applicant applied for asylum in the Netherlands on 27 October 2009, claiming that he hailed from Mogadishu, Somalia and belonged to the minority Reer Hamar population group and the Ashraf clan. When he was three years old, he and his family had moved to Saudi Arabia where he had resided illegally. In 2009, the Saudi Arabian authorities had expelled the applicant to Mogadishu. His mother had accompanied him because he did not know anybody in Mogadishu. They had moved in with an uncle of the applicant’s. As the applicant was unknown to most neighbours, he had been suspected of involvement in al-Shabaab. The applicant had been abducted by some neighbours. After a ransom had been paid by his family he had been released and he had fled the country. He feared that, upon return to Somalia, he would fall victim to human rights violations by one of the warring factions there. He also claimed that, as a member of a minority clan, he had a higher risk of falling victim to human rights violations. 5. By decision of 15 July 2010 the Minister of Justice (minister van Justitie) rejected the asylum application, considering that the applicant’s account lacked credibility. The Minister held that the applicant had failed to establish his nationality and identity. The applicant had been unable to describe how he had been identified as a Somali national by the Somali consular authorities in Saudi Arabia. In this respect it was noted that the applicant had stated that the only Somali words he knew were ‘hello’ and ‘good afternoon’. He had further claimed that the conversation with the consular authorities had been conducted in Arabic. It was thus considered implausible that the consular authorities had been able to determine the Somali origins of the applicant. He had further been unable to describe the airports in Jeddah and Mogadishu. 6. The Minister further disbelieved the account of the applicant’s departure from Mogadishu. The applicant had claimed that he had been on a direct flight from Mogadishu to Nairobi, Kenya. However, according to country of origin information all flights from Mogadishu to Nairobi had to make a safety stop at Wajir, Kenya. The applicant had not mentioned this stop. 7. The applicant’s appeal was dismissed by the Regional Court (rechtbank) of The Hague sitting in Middelburg on 26 May 2011. His further and final appeal was dismissed on summary grounds by the Administrative Jurisdiction Division of the Council of State (Afdeling Bestuursrechtspraak van de Raad van State) on 29 August 2012. 8. On 26 September 2012, a report of a linguistic analysis of the applicant’s speech concluded that he spoke deficient Somali with a Reer Hamar accent; that Somali was not his first or dominant language; and that he had grown up in a diaspora community where (Reer Hamar) Somali was spoken.