Legal recognition expertise iMMO

On April 3, 2025, the Amsterdam District Court issued an important ruling in the case of Yusuf*. Yusuf applied for asylum on the basis of persecution in his country of origin. He argued that he was in danger because of his political beliefs and activities against the government. The Secretary of State considered his asylum claim to be partially implausible, because Yusuf allegedly contradicted himself on certain key parts of his story. After his asylum application was rejected, Yusuf filed an iMMO report with the Amsterdam District Court during the appeal phase.

In this ruling, the court confirmed that invoking iMMO as an expert in this case was not unreasonable, given the nature of Yusuf’s psychological symptoms. This highlights the importance of specialized medical expertise in complex asylum cases such as Yusuf’s. The court had stayed the hearing pending the iMMO report.

The court then ruled that the alien’s appeal was well-founded. Because the secretary of state had not disputed the diligence and content of the iMMO report, he could not simply say that the alien’s testimony was contradictory, inconsistent or summary.

He referred to the differences between the further and supplementary hearing and therefore found Yusuf’s asylum account implausible. However, it is not sufficient to ignore the conclusions of the iMMO report based solely on the nature and extent of contradictions. Therefore, the State Secretary could not remedy the defect in the decision-making process, as indicated in the ruling of December 7, 2022 (ECLI:NL:RVS:2022:3615). The state secretary did not appeal. This means that this ruling is final and the IND must again decide on Yusuf’s asylum application, taking into account the iMMO report.

In addition, the court found the fee charged for the iMMO investigation to be reasonable. For iMMO, the ruling represents recognition of the value and necessity of the costs associated with conducting thorough forensic medical examinations. It is essential to the continued existence of iMMO that the costs of our expert reports be reimbursed. The iMMO investigations are labor intensive and therefore costly.

In accordance with case law, iMMO uses a fee based on the rates in criminal cases; that now stands at €8470 per investigation. But the actual cost of an iMMO investigation is double that.

iMMO will pay special attention to the cost reimbursement issue of iMMO reports in the next newsletter.

UPDATE: After this post was published, the lawyer informed us that Yusuf’s asylum application has been granted.

* Names are fictitious.