The High Court has refused an Eritrean woman leave to seek judicial review of a Refugee Appeals Tribunal decision that affirmed a negative recommendation on her asylum application.
In a judgment delivered on 28 April 2010, Mr Justice Cooke said the proposed challenge did not justify court intervention in the Tribunal’s assessment of the woman’s credibility. The ruling concerned leave to seek judicial review; it was not a fresh determination of her asylum claim.
The woman, identified in the judgment only as T.D., arrived in Ireland as an unaccompanied 17-year-old in October 2006 and applied for asylum in January 2007. She said she had been mistreated in Eritrea because she belonged to the Kale Hiwot church, and described arrests involving her father and children attending religious lessons at a family’s home. The Commissioner recommended against her claim in April 2007, and the Tribunal affirmed that recommendation in January 2008.
The judgment said the decision-makers accepted country information documenting suppression of the Kale Hiwot church and arrests of its members. They nevertheless found T.D.’s account of her personal experiences not credible. Among the concerns were that her account of a mass arrest at a wedding was not reflected in the available country information, and that her description of government action at her school appeared inconsistent with information about a formal confiscation of church property in September 2006.
A separate finding under section 11B of the Refugee Act 1996, made in the Commissioner’s report and not challenged on appeal, concerned T.D.’s account of her journey to Ireland. The investigation found no direct flights of the kind she described between Khartoum and Dublin. The High Court said that finding put the Tribunal on inquiry about her credibility, but did not by itself rule out a genuine fear of persecution.
The court considered the Tribunal’s concern that Gebru, who was said to have helped arrange T.D.’s departure after children were arrested at his home, did not himself flee. It held that this was a reasoned credibility concern grounded in the account and country information, not personal speculation. The court also found it open to the Tribunal to question the unreported wedding arrest and rejected a complaint that it misunderstood why parents did not go to the police station.
On the school evidence, the judge said the Tribunal may have read too much into the interpreter’s use of “confiscation”, since the evidence could describe government control and a ban on religious teaching before the formal 2006 confiscation. But he concluded that this was not a clear, fundamental error undermining the overall assessment. Leave to seek judicial review was refused.