MOTIVATION OF AN ASYLUM APPLICATION HANDED OUT TO PROSECUTION AUTHORITIES OF FOUR FOREIGN COUNTRIES
Since 1988 the records of Gerard McGeough's asylum procedure in Sweden are downrightly "travelling" around in Europe. The Swedish state has sent the entire file to criminal prosecution authorities in Belgium, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Germany.
Both the Council of Europe and the UNHCR have repeatedly stipulated that refugees must be guaranteed complete secrecy when disclosing the grounds for their asylum application. The Swedish government openly breaches these recommendations.
Gerard McGeough, a Northern-Irishman, came to Sweden in 1983. He applied for asylum on the grounds that he feared persecution in his home country as a result of his pro-republican activities. Four years later, in 1987, his application was definitively rejected. McGeough went underground in order to escape deportation.
In August 1988 he was arrested in West Germany, together with another man from Northern Ireland. The two were charged with illegal possession of arms and bomb attacks against British targets in West Germany. For a while they were also suspected of involvment in the murder of a British soldier in Oostende, Belgium, but the case was later dropped without accusation.
In Sweden McGeough had lived together with a Swedish woman in Malm". On request of the Belgian prosecution authorities the Malm" police searched the appartment of the woman. On this occasion the police found copies of parts of the file of McGeough's asylum procedure. The copies were sent to Belgium. The Belgians became interested and officially asked the Swedish government to lend it the entire records of McGeough's asylum procedure. The Belgian request was followed by similar requests from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Germany. Sweden gave way to all requests and even expressly authorized the German judicial authorities to make use of the documents in McGeough's trial in Düsseldorf.
In late May, after almost four years of detention on remand the bombing charges against McGeough were dropped and the proceedings concerning illegal possession of arms quashed. However, instead of being set free, McGeough was extradited to the USA, where he is accused of having attempted to illegally buy arms in 1982.
But what Mc Geough now fears most is an eventual later extradition to Britain.
Indeed, the records of the Swedish asylum procedure which are in the hands of British prosecution authorities contain, among other documents, a 17 page type written text which is said to give a detailed description of Mc Geough's relations with the IRA. The text is however not signed.
Mc Geough's German defence attorney, Elke Nill is nonetheless worried about the possible effects of the Swedish asylum records in Britain. According to Ms. Nill the British authorities have no other information on Mc Geough than the Swedish documents.
The Swedish breach of secrecy with regard to information given by refugees within the asylum procedure cannot be seen as a regrettable, solitary "accident".
The head of the legal section of the Swedish Foreign Department (Utrikes Departementet), Hans Corell, says that asylum requests do not benefit from absolute secrecy. He points at Swedish secrecy legislation which entitles the public administration to hand out secret information in certain cases, as e.g. when this is necessary for police enquiries. Indeed, para 14,3 of the scecrecy law states that secret information can be communicated to public administration "when it is obvious that the interest of handing out the information has priority over the interest which secrecy shall protect".
Mc Geough's case demonstrates that, according to official Swedish interpretation of the paragraph, the interests of the public administrations of foreign countries, including the country the asylum seeker has fled, prevail against his interest in secrecy.
As elsewhere, asylum seekers in Sweden are under strong pressure to exhaustively disclose the grounds for their fear of persecution. According to Swedish asylum regulations the withholding of any information of importance for the procedure can lead to a summary rejection of the asylum application on the formal ground of obstruction of the procedure.
The fundamental right to seek protection from persecution by seeking asylum in a foreign country is deprived of its content, once refugees can no longer be sure whether their most intimate confidences justifying a claim for protection will benefit from absolute secrecy.
The Swedish government's handling of the McGeough case is indeed a grave precedent.
N.B.
Sources: "Arbetaren", Stockholm, No.17, 24.4.92, article by Jonas Fogelqvist; Ingmarie Edwards, Stockholm. For further information contact: Ingmarie Edwards, Tegelvägen 14, S-161 20 Bromma, Sweden, Tel:+46 8 986436; Elke Nill, lawyer, Handschuhsheimer Landstr.41, D-6900 Heidelberg, Germany, Tel: +49 6221 46017, fax: +49 6221 400469.