The judge said “traumatic life experience” can make young men “appear older than they actually are” after concern over the migrant’s “deep voice and grey hair”.
Derby City Council claimed the migrant was ‘clearly an adult’ (Image: Derby Telegraph/Simon Deacon)
A UK court has ruled that a Syrian migrant with “a deep voice and receding grey hair” was a child when he arrived on a small boat last year. The unnamed asylum seeker claimed to have been 16 when he travelled across the Channel to Britain. Derby City Council carried out an age assessment afterwards, which led them to believe he was “significantly over 18 years of age”. Senior immigration officers estimated him to be between 24 and 26 years old, and pointed to his “hairy, muscular arms”, “wrinkles” on his forehead and “crow’s feet lines” around his eyes.
He also reportedly had “stubble, a deep voice, a visible Adam’s apple [and] a receding hairline with grey hair all over his head”. The migrant appealed the case and successfully overturned it after a hearing in the Upper Tribunal of the Immigration and Asylum Chamber, with a judge ruling that he was indeed 16 at the time of his arrival.
The Syrian migrant came to the UK on a small boat (Image: Getty)
Judge Gaenor Bruce, a former human rights lawyer, accepted that the Syrian’s date of birth was August 12, 2008.
“Young men typically start to develop facial hair in adolescence, but its thickness and rate of growth can vary,” she told the hearing.
“Life experience, in particular traumatic life experience, can make someone appear older than they actually are; as can genetics and exposure to the elements.”
She added that she did not believe the migrant’s assertion that he is completely illiterate, “to the point of being unable to sign his own name at the bottom of his statements”, however. “That is quite obviously incompatible with his use of a smartphone,” Judge Bruce explained
“Overall, I have found the chronology in the applicant’s narrative to be internally and externally consistent with what is known about events in northern Syria.”
The asylum seeker claimed that he had lived with his mother on a farm in the West Asian country and had been “scared the entire time” during his perilous crossing to the UK.
The hearing was told that he had been kept at Dover for two days after landing, before being transferred to a migrant hotel in London for two weeks and eventually moved to Derby.
Judge Bruce quashed Derby City Council’s decision that the migrant is “clearly an adult” and said the Labour-led local authority would be made to pay his legal costs.
