R (Dost Mohammed) v Secretary of State for Defence

The judgment of the Court of Appeal in the case of R (Dost Mohammed) v Secretary of State for Defence was given on 1 May 2007.

The Court of Appeal accepted the judgment of Justice Langstaff at the High Court that the Government's Far East Prisoner of War Scheme did not unlawfully discriminate against the Claimant.

Mr Mohammed is a Pakistani national who fought for the British in WWII and was captured by the Japanese in Singapore in 1942. He was held in a Japanese prisoner of war camp until the end of the war in 1945. He suffered enormous hardship but despite everything remained loyal to the British rather than winning his freedom by defecting.

The Government announced in 2000 that a special compensatory payment, known as the Far East Prisoner of War Scheme, would be paid to servicemen who had been held as Japanese prisoners of war, out of recognition for the excessive suffering that they endured. However, it determined that only those members of the (British) Indian Army who were paid under related scheme in the 1950s, would be eligible for payment.

In 2002 PIL brought a case on behalf of a former Gurkha prisoner of war who had also been excluded from the compensation scheme. Justice McCombe found in 2003 that Shyam Bahadur Gurung had been unlawfully discriminated against on grounds of his race. This was because the evidence we presented to the court showed that the 1950s payments had been made to servicemen subject to the British, as opposed to Indian, Military Code and who were, therefore, "European" - a clear euphemism for "white". As a result, Gurkha servicemen, deemed to be "natives", as opposed to "European", were denied compensation both in the 1950s and in 2000.

Mr Mohammed was also excluded from the scheme because he was not paid in the 1950s. However, Justice Langstaff at the High Court found that his exclusion was not on grounds of race, but on grounds of nationality. This form of discrimination is allowed, subject to certain conditions, by the Race Relations Act 1976. Langstaff J felt that those conditions had been met, which we also strongly disagreed with.

Public Interest Lawyers feel that both judgments were disappointing.

Mr Mohammed is now a very old man and in poor health. A judgment in his favour would have been a token of Britain's appreciation to Mr Mohammed for the hardship that he suffered and the loyalty that he showed if the court had found him to be entitled to compensation in the same way as the British servicemen who were captured and held like him.

We recognise that a moral debt is owed to Mr Mohammed, and we believe that there are others in this country who would agree. We only wish that the High Court and Court of Appeal could have agreed with us.