The High Court has quashed a tribunal decision rejecting a Pakistani journalist’s appeal for subsidiary protection and sent the appeal back for a fresh hearing before a different tribunal member.
In a judgment delivered on 10 July 2018, Mr Justice Richard Humphreys granted certiorari of the International Protection Appeals Tribunal decision. The court did not decide whether the applicant qualified for protection; it ordered the appeal to be reheard.
The applicant said he worked as a journalist in Pakistan and wrote an article in 2011 alleging a local madrassa was associated with al-Qaeda and a related group. He said he was shot at twice in December 2011 and again in February 2012, then left Pakistan and sought asylum in Ireland. His asylum application and subsequent appeal were unsuccessful. He later applied for subsidiary protection, which was refused in December 2015. The tribunal rejected his appeal in January 2017.
The applicant challenged that decision on several grounds. The judge rejected his argument that the tribunal had to make a separate express finding about whether he was who he said he was, provided it had lawfully reached a general adverse credibility finding.
But the judge found legal errors in the tribunal’s treatment of documents submitted in support of the claim. The tribunal said it could not verify their authenticity and that they were of little value. In the particular circumstances, the judge held that its conclusion that the documents would not materially assist the applicant was irrational. He said the tribunal could have assessed the documents’ apparent reliability or explained that even reliable documents did not advance the claim.
The court also found the tribunal’s response to medical evidence insufficiently clear. Reports indicated the applicant had post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety and insomnia. The judge said the tribunal had not adequately explained why the applicant’s medical condition did not account for inconsistencies in his evidence.
On future risk, the judge held that the tribunal had to form its own view of whether any risk of serious harm remained, including factors independent of the credibility findings. He concluded that the tribunal had not applied that forward-looking test. He also found that the tribunal had wrongly approached its appeal as a review of whether the commissioner’s decision was open to that decision-maker, instead of making its own assessment of the evidence on appeal.
The court ordered the tribunal decision quashed and remitted the applicant’s appeal for hearing by a different tribunal member.