9.11.2017 A & Ors v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2004] EWCA Civ 1123 (11 August 2004) that the Secretary of State had changed his case at a late stage causing such unfairness to D as to justify striking down SIAC's decision against him, and I will come to that. We are not, then, on the whole concerned with factual minutiae. But I must give some account of the individual cases, both in order to set the scene and because in some instances they are the necessary introduction of more general arguments. A 174. A is an Algerian who arrived in the United Kingdom on 31 July 1989. There is some immigration history. On 29 July 1992 the Secretary of State decided to deport him as an overstayer. His appeal was dismissed and a deportation order was signed. He went to Sweden but was returned here by the Swedish authorities. He sought asylum on the basis of his claimed involvement with an Algerian newspaper. That was refused and his appeal was dismissed. In the spring of 2001 he applied for indefinite leave to remain in the United Kingdom on the basis that children of his had been living in this country for more than seven years. That was rejected in December 2001, and on 17 December 2001 the Secretary of State issued a certificate under ACTSA s.21(1) in A's case. The certificate was notified to A the following day. 175. The essence of the Secretary of State's case relating to A was that he had been active in supporting a terrorist group called the GSPC within the United Kingdom, and more broadly had supported the objectives of Osama bin Laden and Al Qa'eda. The GSPC (which is a proscribed organisation under the Terrorism Act 2000) is described in SIAC's open generic judgment as follows: "289. … [I]t is clear that the GSPC is an international terrorist group. We consider the evidence, open and closed, supports the conclusion that it is active in pursuit of both a national agenda, including fighting the Algerian regime and the Zouabri-led GIA, and a wider anti-Western agenda. We reject the suggestion that its attention is confined to Algeria or that it can be regarded as not part of the Al Qa'eda-linked threat because it does not target civilians. The latter proposition resulted from a series of questions designed to highlight the difference between the GIA and the GSPC. But there is no evidence at all to support the curious implicit proposition that GSPC terrorism excluded any civilian targets, or that attacks on non-civilian targets in the West are excluded from the scope of the emergency. The distinction itself is over simple: how do police, civil servants in the Ministry of Defence or Security Services' buildings fare? There was evidence, particularly in closed, about GSPC-linked civilian attacks outside Algeria, in France and Niger. 290 The GSPC was also linked to Al Qa'eda through training, and funding and in other ways, from all the material which we had. Here the UN list is supportive of the evidence given to us and can add to the weight of evidence as to those links. It is controlled or influenced by people outside the United Kingdom, as for that matter is the GIA." As for the GIA, SIAC held at paragraph 282 of the open generic judgment that it was a functioning terrorist organisation but with no current links "at an organisational level" with Al Qa'eda. In the same paragraph they also stated: "It poses no threat to western interests outside Algeria. Those threats, disturbing though they are, are not the basis of, nor truly part of, the Al Qa'eda linked emergency. As an organisation it is difficult to see that it is currently part of the threat to the United Kingdom underlying the public emergency. It focuses on Algeria currently… The GIA is significant in these appeals either as the precursor to the GSPC, or as the original terrorist group supported by those who are said now to be significantly connected to other looser networks, and in that different way linked to Al Qa'eda." 176. More specifically the case against A was that he had supported the GSPC by means of his involvement in credit card fraud, which was the GSPC's main source of income in the United Kingdom. He had also been heavily involved in the procurement of telecommunications equipment, giving assistance to a terrorist called Abu Doha, who at length was arrested at Heathrow Airport as he tried to flee the United Kingdom. Abu Doha headed or inspired a group, referred to as "the Abu Doha Group", of which SIAC in its generic judgment said this: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2004/1123.html 43/113