Source: The Guardian

A Moroccan woman and her child claimed asylum after fleeing forced underage marriage and extreme violence, including rape, and said she feared being killed by her husband, described as a powerful, previously convicted criminal. The Home Office refused her claim and, in its refusal letter, cited a country policy information note (CPIN) it said established Morocco would be safe for her; no published CPIN on Morocco has existed since 2017 and the Home Office’s country policy and information team said it could not confirm the cited document’s existence.

On 14 July a judge in the Upper Tribunal said “it appears that no such CPIN has ever existed” and described reliance on a non-existent document as “analogous to relying on bogus evidence”, calling the matter a “procedural irregularity”. The judge added that the refusal letter “bears hallmarks consistent with the use of artificial intelligence” and suggested the reference to “country information note Morocco July 2021” could be an AI “hallucination”, which the judge said would be an “extremely serious failing” if so. The Guardian reports the Home Office first sent an archive link where the document could not be found and then supplied an unpublished internal country information note (CIN) that had not been disclosed in proceedings; that internal note does not conclude Morocco is safe for the forcible return of women in the appellant’s situation and records issues including exemptions granting 40,000 child marriages in 2018 and that marital rape is not explicitly criminalised. The Home Office said it could provide additional information requested by the judge and reiterated a statement about restoring order to the asylum system. The woman’s appeal remains ongoing.