The Court of Appeal  is clearly at pains  to ensure that both tiers of the Tribunal get the law right  when  considering appeals in relation to foreign national criminals.  As acknowledged in the recent case of The Secretary of State for the Home Department v AJ (Zimbabwe) [2016] EWCA Civ 1012, “There has been a plethora of cases which have come to this court concerning the application of article 8 to foreign criminals and in particular seeking to clarify the scope of the residual “exceptional circumstances” concept. The principles of law are well established and not in dispute in these appeals and therefore I will do no more than summarise the effect of the leading authorities”.

Apart from reiterating the  relevant principles, the Court of Appeal also  emphasized that the general framework of Strasbourg law as established in cases such as Maslov cannot simply be slavishly applied  as this  fails to view the Article 8 assessment through the lens of the Immigration Rules and will cause Tribunals to go astray, as  occurred in AJ (Zimbabwe).

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