LAWYERS FOR asylum seekers Pamela Izevbekhai and her two daughters are to seek the Supreme Court’s permission to withdraw from the case, it was confirmed last night.
Sources said this was because the legal team felt it was not tenable for them to be party to an action based on a fraudulent document.
On Sunday Ms Izevbekhai admitted on RTÉ radio’s Marian Finucane Show that documents she used in court actions, opposing her own and her daughters’ deportation to Nigeria, were forged.
The case is scheduled for the Supreme Court on Friday.
Meanwhile, Minister of State for Integration Conor Lenihan rejected to criticism of him in some media yesterday.
On Sunday he said he had been assured on a visit to Nigeria last week that female circumcision was not widespread there.
“I simply quoted what Nigeria’s attorney general and minister for justice, the chief law officer of the state, said at an open press conference in Abuja [the Nigerian capital] attended by 27 national and international journalists.
“There he said he would be delighted to appear as a witness in any court case in Ireland and Europe to testify that there was no danger of female genital mutilation where any woman returning to Nigeria was concerned,” Mr Lenihan said.
He also recalled that the Nigerian attorney general and minister for justice Michael Aondoakaa had described as “liars” those Nigerians who claimed a risk of female genital mutilation at home when making asylum applications abroad.
“I was simply quoting what he and several other ministers had said,” Mr Lenihan recalled.
He also noted that “some of those most critical of me have been sponsoring a case which is demonstrably based on a forgery”.
Their criticisms were “wide of the mark”, he said.
Noeline Blackwell, director general of Free Legal Aid Centres (Flac) and an expert in refugee law, has described the legal situation surrounding Ms Izevbekhai and her daughters as “unprecedented”.
It was “extremely complicated”, she added.
Ms Izevbekhai “still claims she needs protection”. Up to two weeks ago everyone accepted she had lost a child due to female genital mutilation, but now it appeared from media reports this might not be so, Ms Blackwell said.
Legally, she said, the situation was “a nightmare for all concerned”.
A spokesman for the Department of Justice said that the State’s apparent delay in investigating the four-year-old case was initially due to restraints imposed under the 1996 Refugee Act.
It prohibits such investigations during an asylum seeker application process.
However, once a decision had been made on an application and when the process had been exhausted, such legal inhibition disappeared.
Findings in the case, by gardaí and Irish officials, have already been forwarded to the European Court in Strasbourg and will be presented in the Supreme Court on Friday.
Yesterday, the Sligo-based Let Them Stay group called on Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern to grant Ms Izevbekhai and her daughters leave to remain in Ireland.
The group believed that revelations that some documents were fake did not undermine the veracity of Ms Izevbekhai’s case.