9.11.2017 A & Ors v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2004] EWCA Civ 1123 (11 August 2004) 191. Although it acknowledged (open specific judgment paragraph 11) that the fraud case depended effectively entirely on closed material, SIAC gave a good deal of chapter and verse for its conclusion that (paragraph 23): "We are entirely satisfied that the Secretary of State is reasonable in his suspicion that Ajouaou supports or assists the GIA, the GSPC, and the looser group based around Abu Doha, and in his belief that at any time Ajouaou is in the United Kingdom his presence here is a risk to national security." F 192. F is an Algerian who (on his own account) first arrived in the United Kingdom in 1994 on a false Spanish passport. In 1997 he was charged alongside others with offences contrary to the Prevention of Terrorism Act. He claimed asylum in December 1997. On 3 March 2000 the case against him and his co-defendants was abandoned. On 15 March 2000 he was granted a right of residence until March 2005 on account of his French wife's status as an EEA resident. On 17 December 2001 the Secretary of State issued a certificate under s.21 on grounds that: "You have provided active support to the [GIA], which is designated a proscribed organisation under Part 2 of the Terrorism Act 2000. Your activities on behalf of international terrorists include the procurement of terrorism-related materials and equipment and the provision of false documentation." 193. F was detained pursuant to the certificate under ATCSA s.23 but (as SIAC put it in paragraph 6 of their open specific judgment), "[o]n 12 March 2002, [he] decided that he could face detention no longer. He went to France the next day." He remains in France. It is to be noted that he had become a French national in May 2001, though he does not seem to have informed the Secretary of State of the fact. His first notice of appeal against the certificate, lodged on 21 December 2001, stated that his nationality was Algerian. 194. In describing the facts of Ajouaou's case I have already explained the nature of the sequence of events culminating, in that case and this, in the bringing of a second appeal against the certificate after the appellant's departure from the United Kingdom, the revocation thereafter of the certificate by the Secretary of State, and the issue then arising as to SIAC's jurisdiction to continue to entertain the second appeal. F lodged his second appeal one day out of time (with SIAC's leave given under ATCSA s.25(5)(b)). Thereafter, as in Ajouaou and for the same reasons, the Secretary of State revoked the certificate pursuant to s.21(7). As I have said SIAC considered that in those circumstances there was no jurisdiction to entertain the s.25 appeal further, but they confronted its merits in case they were wrong. 195. SIAC first addressed the contention that, since F was a French national, he could have been removed to France, and in those circumstances there had been no basis for his detention under ATCSA s.23 and therefore no justification for a s.21 certificate. But the Secretary of State had no knowledge of F's French nationality when he issued the certificate. Accordingly (open specific judgment paragraph 19) that nationality could not avail to impugn the certificate although "[the certificate] ought… to have been revoked once the ability to remove was appreciated". 196. SIAC proceeded next to consider whether there had been a reasonable belief and suspicion within the meaning of ATCSA s.21 at the time of certification ("since nothing material occurred so far as [F] was concerned while he was detained": open specific judgment paragraph 20). They acknowledged (paragraph 22) that there would have been no basis for a certificate in May 1997 (had ATCSA then been in force) when F had been charged with terrorist offences, since, for want of links with Al Qa'eda, the GIA and its activities would not have fallen within the scope of the Article 15 derogation. Accordingly SIAC stated (paragraph 22): "The question therefore must be whether his activities since March 2000, when the prosecution collapsed, seen in the light of what was known against him could establish the necessary suspicion and belief to justify certification." http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2004/1123.html 47/113