Motivated by an idealistic desire to fight crime, the claimant joined the police force in her native Zimbabwe in 2000. She kept this employment until 2007, which she reported that she began to realize that the police were involved in numerous incidents of violent oppression of the political opposition. Shortly thereafter, she sought asylum in the United Kingdom. At her hearing, evidence was presented that the claimant had been a note-taker at the interrogation of one opposition sympathizer and that she had participated in a raid on the home of another opposition member. Among several other questions, the Upper Tribunal addressed whether these acts should lead to her exclusion from refugee status. The Tribunal concluded that these incidents demonstrated that the claimant was an aider and abettor, noting that in the interrogation she acted "with specific intent to contribute substantially to it and that her role assisted the common purpose of putting this man in fear of his life" (at ΒΆ 129). Because the Zimbabwean police force's campaign against the political opposition was sufficiently widespread to constitute an international crime, the claimant's participation rendered her excludable from refugee status.. |