A Sudanese migrant has been allowed to stay in the UK because she is married to her cousin. Isra Abdallah Ibrahim was initially refused asylum in Britain because authorities suspected she only got married so she could join her husband in Europe after he was granted refugee status.
Marriage details and legal challenge
Mrs Ibrahim claimed to have married her cousin in a "customary Islamic marriage" in their home country of Sudan in 2011, despite the union not being recorded in any official documentation. The couple then remarried by proxy in Libya in 2014, in what officials believed was "merely a staging post en-route to Europe".
But the husband, who sponsored Mrs Ibrahim's bid to remain in the UK, convinced a tribunal that he had planned to stay in Libya and not come to Britain before he was forced to flee, rendering the marriage legitimate.
Tribunal ruling under ECHR
The migrant won her case at the Upper Tribunal in Manchester under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which protects people's rights to a private family life. There was a legal debate at the tribunal over whether the couple, as cousins, were within the "prohibited degree of relationship set out in the applicable rules". But it was decided they were not in violation of any rules, as in Britain and many other countries it is legal to marry your first cousin.
The tribunal heard that Mrs Ibrahim's husband had left her in Sudan while he worked for two years in Libya, remarrying her by proxy so she could join him, as "their customary marriage would not have been recognised by the Libyan authorities". But "when the security conditions seriously deteriorated in Libya ... he made the decision to flee for Europe" and was granted refugee status in the UK in 2015.
Judge's assessment and outcome
The Home Office found that he "never intended to set down roots in Libya" and had facilitated the proxy marriage to allow his wife to eventually live with him in the UK. But Mrs Ibrahim appealed the decision, claiming a breach of her human rights under the ECHR.
Upper Tribunal Judge Paul Lodato said: "When I stand back and assess the overall evidential picture, [Mrs Ibrahim] has established on the balance of probabilities, through the fully tested evidence of her sponsor, that she married her husband in 2014 when he was habitually resident in Libya.
"By the time the couple married by proxy in March 2014, the sponsor had been living and working in Libya for well over a year, had seemingly taken no steps to leave the country for an onward destination and had made arrangements to regularise his wife’s status with the intention of putting in place the conditions for her to join him in Libya.
"I am satisfied that this all weighs in favour of the sponsor having settled in Libya with a degree of continuity over an appreciable and meaningful period of time.
"Having found that the couple were married when the sponsor was in his country of habitual residence, and in accordance with the parties agreement that this was a decisive and dispositive question of fact, the appeal is allowed because [Mrs Ibrahim] met the applicable rules which renders the refusal decision demonstrably disproportionate."
