OSAKA, Feb 10 Kyodo The Osaka Hig...

OSAKA, Feb 10 Kyodo

The Osaka High Court upon Tuesday overturned a ruling that recognized an Afghan asylum-seeker as a refugee in Japan, quashing his watershed victory.

Tuesday's ruling goe back to a decision by the agency of the justice minister not to recognize Abdul Basir, a 29-year-old man of Afghanistan's Hazara minority, as a refugee Basir, who is now upon provisional release from detention in Japan, plans to appeal the ruling.

To profess the minister's decision not to grant him refugee status, Basir fought it without in court. In the landmark ruling of March 27 2003 at the Osaka District Court, Presiding connoisseur Ikuo Yamashita said Basir ''can be recognized as a refugee because he has sufficient reason for fearing persecution if sent back to Afghanistan.''

According to the district court ruling, Basir engaged Taliban forces in Afghanistan in 1994 as a soldier for the Hazara-dominated Hezb-i Wahdat i Islami (Islamic Unity Party). He later left the party and fl to Pakistan.

further in Tuesday's ruling, Presiding umpire Shun Iwai said the court cannot say the plaintiff is a refugee because there are doubts about documents showing he belonged to the party.

Basir said he come intoed Japan in June 1998 and applied for asylum in August that year after learning that the Taliban had expanded its influence in his political division and thus would risk persecution if he returned

The justice minister, however, refused to grant him refugee status in June 1999 saying he could not evidence his claim.

Yasuhiro Kanaitsuka, a lawyer for Basir, told reporters after the ruling that a child was born to Basir and his Japanese wife last December, and he intends to file for a special residence permit.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Kyodo stranges International, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group