The applicant belongs to Biharie minority in Bangladesh, and applied for the recognition of his statelessness in France, submitting additional documentary evidence that access to Bangladeshi nationality is restricted for him. The Court could not make sense of all the documents submitted, and requested both the applicant and OFPRA to submit additional information and observations regarding the nature of the documents and the circumstances in which they were issued.
The applicant was born on June 25, 1970 in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He entered France on 25th of July 2004 and applied for refugee status, which was rejected on the 22nd of November 2004. He then applied for the statelessness status on the 26th of October 2005, which was rejected on the 27th of June 2006, on the basis that he has the nationality of Bangladesh. The applicant submitted additional documents that appeared like certificates of annulment of Bangladeshi nationality, as well as a document concerning the rejection of the applicant's request for nationality.
The applicant maintained that the OFPRA mistakenly concluded that he could benefit from Bangladeshi nationality. He belongs to Biharie minority, and his access to citizenship is therefore restricted. While Article 2 of the Law of 15 December 1972 states that a Bangladeshi citizen is any person born and residing permanently in a territory belonging to the Bangladesh on 25 March 1971, an amendment of this Law of 11 February 1978 provides that a person cannot acquire Bangladeshi citizenship if he pledges allegiance to a foreign state. The applicant attached two documents intending to illustrate that this provision is applicable to his individual case.
OFPRA argued that according to Article 2 of the ordinance of 15 December 1972, a Bangladeshi citizen is any person born and residing permanently in a territory belonging to the Bangladesh on March 25, 1971, which includes the applicant. The applicant argues that a Bangladeshi legislative provision adopted on 11 February 1978, amending said Article 2, provides that a person cannot acquire Bangladeshi citizenship if he pledges allegiance to a foreign state, but he does not establish that this amendment was applied to him by Bangladesh.
The Court could not make sense of the documents submitted by the applicant in support that the Bangladeshi nationality was inaccessible to him as a result of his belonging to a minority group, and OFPRA did not comment on those documents. The Court asked the applicant and OFPRA to submit additional clarifications and obsrevations regarding those documents.
The Court reasoned as follows:
"Considering, therefore, that the state of the file does not allow the Court to determine, on the one hand, whether Mr. A [the applicant] qualifies as a national of the State of Bangladesh, and on the other hand, and if he does not qualify as a national, to determine whether Mr. A has been recognised or appears to qualify for recognition as a national of another State;"
"under these conditions, it is necessary to order, before the final decision, additional clarifications. [The Court] invites Mr. A and OFPRA to produce all supporting evidence and all relevant explanations on the circumstances of the issuance of the certificate produced in attachment no.15 and on the scope of this certificate, and to bring to the file the complete translation, in French, of the document produced in attachment n ° 16 [...] as well as any documentary evidence likely to clarify for the Court the significance of paragraph C of this document."
The Court ordered additional clarifications from both parties on two documentary pieces of evidence.