Is NZ a soft touch? 

He was an Iraqi who joined the Baath party and worked as a doctor in the Fedayeen, the commando unit set up by Saddam Hussein's eldest son Uday.

When the unnamed doctor and his wife landed on New Zealand's doorstep seeking refugee status in April 2002 the refugee status branch of the Immigration Service turned them down. Now, three years on, and with two children born here, the Refugee Status Appeals Authority says they can stay.

Is the situation another signal of what Winston Peters claims is our lax approach to border security - making us a soft touch for terrorists?

Or was the husband's claim that he faced having his tongue cut out before being executed if sent home to Iraq well-founded? Certainly, the authority accepted there was a fair chance, in a decision last month.

The couple's is the latest of 26 refugee status appeal decisions since the start of last year dealing with Iraqis. Of those, 15 appeals were allowed and 11 declined.

A look at the decisions, all published on the internet, indicates the authority takes a robust, conservative approach.

It is a painstaking process: the doctor and his wife were declined refugee status in May last year, more than two years after arrival. Their appeal was heard in October.

Since October, all 10 decisions involving Iraqis have been allowed - most involved Christians with accounts of worsening persecution in Iraq since the fall of Saddam.

The doctor's appeal was the only one from an Iraqi with acknowledged links to Saddam's Baath Party (although in several cases all details were suppressed to protect the appellants).

The decisions shed light on a treacherous world of ethnic and religious tension, suspicion, corruption, threats and retribution.

The authority has access to documentation submitted by applicants and the latest status reports on Iraq from the UN and foreign governments. But it places particular store on appellants' demeanour and "credibility". Those with inconsistent stories are shown the door.

The doctor's was among the more compelling the authority has heard. Because of low grades, he obtained sponsorship from the Iraqi Ministry of Defence in the early-1990s to enter medical school at Baghdad University.

A consequence of his "pact with this particular devil", as the decision puts it, was that he serve as a doctor in the Iraqi military. He was given the rank of first lieutenant and required to join the Baath party.

In late-1994 he spent four months as a medical officer in a training camp for the Fedayeen and in 1996 was placed in another military unit before returning to a Baghdad hospital.

In 2001 he was on duty in the Accident & Emergency ward when two of Saddam's private guards arrived with a soldier said to have insulted Saddam. They presented a written order demanding the amputation of the soldier's tongue, and requiring his forehead to be branded.

He told them that he was not qualified to carry out such procedures and that the only surgeon on duty was in surgery. After further refusals, the guard ordered the hospital's internal security officers to arrest the husband but they refused. Before leaving, the guard warned of dire consequences.

The doctor and his wife fled north. He dropped his wife at her family home and was smuggled across the border into Syria, then Jordan, where his wife later joined him.

In his appeal, the doctor acknowledged that the dismantling of Saddam's regime meant there was no longer any realistic chance he would be punished for refusing to mutilate a detainee.

But he had documented evidence of other threats. A Shiite militia group, the Badr Brigade, was out to punish him for his association with the Fedayeen. Members of the Fedayeen, meanwhile, reminded his family in Iraq that he owed allegiance to them, and warned him against collaborating with occupying forces. Last year, his father and brother were attacked.

The authority obtained a March UN Security Council update which referred to the heavy toll still being exacted on civilians, and instances where even low-level Baath Party members had been murdered.

A UN Human Rights Commission report said extremists were still carrying out personal vendettas.

In granting refugee status, the authority said there was a real chance both husband and wife would be subjected to serious harm if they returned to Iraq.

DECISIONS BY APPEAL BODY

Approved

* Chaldean Christian who fled after breaking the arm of a Shiite Al Sadr militia member who was trying to abduct his sister. The 28-year-old practising Christian, his mother and sister had experienced abuse from Shiites since the fall of the Baath regime. Shiite fundamentalists regarded Christians as supporters of George W. Bush. After his escape, his brother was critically injured by Al-Sadr members seeking revenge, and later died. He fears he too will be killed if he returns to Iraq.

* A 28-year-old doctor and follower of the Mandaean faith, regarded by Muslims as infidels and unclean. In September 2000, the doctor internally examined a young Muslim woman, with her permission. On finding out his religion, her husband and brother-in-law shouted and swore at the doctor and hit a male nurse. Hospital police arrived and the pair were jailed for attacking the doctor beneath a portrait of Saddam Hussein. The patient's husband swore revenge and the doctor fled, first to Yemen, then New Zealand. His family in Baghdad have since been subjected to frequent attacks.

Declined

* A 59-year-old former customs officer who fled Iraq after he was allegedly asked to perform terrorist acts but who now fears persecution by groups who suspect him to be a Baath collaborator. His first appeal was rejected and a second appeal, on grounds of changed circumstances, was declined last September. In the first appeal, the authority found his claim that he was recruited as a spy and ordered to kill anti-Iraqi dissidents in Syria and the Lebanon was false. It found his demeanour "evasive and mobile" and his evidence inconsistent and glib. At the second hearing, the man offered evidence of memory loss following an assault by car thieves in Auckland last April. But the authority ruled that his new evidence, that he was being hunted by anti-Baathist groups, was fictitious.

* An Assyrian Christian who apprehended Baath spies in his work with the Assyrian Democratic Movement in northern Iraq and survived two attempts by Iraqi agents to kill him. In 1999, he escaped to India, where he obtained a visitor's visa to enter New Zealand to marry his fiancee. He did not marry her, but in 2001 married another woman, who was subsequently convicted of attempting to murder him. He feared he would be seriously harmed, either for his political activities or as an Assyrian Christian, if he returned to Iraq. But the authority found that, following the removal from power of Saddam and the Baathist regime, he faced no greater risk than other Iraqis.

* A 33-year-old Kurd whose brother, a commander in the Kurdish army, was killed by a bomb planted by Ansar al-Islam, a radical Islam group. In October 2001, shortly after his brother's death, he escaped a bomb blast which killed eight. Believing he may have been the target, he fled the country. He fears that if he returns to Iraq he will be targeted by the group, believing he wishes to avenge his brother's death. The authority found his reasoning fanciful and speculative. There was nothing to suggest he would be targeted by Ansar al-Islam or persecuted as a Kurd if he returned to Iraq. It said the situation in Kurdish controlled areas was considerably more secure than elsewhere in Iraq.