The High Court has set aside two International Protection Appeals Tribunal decisions refusing protection to a Georgian couple, finding that the tribunal did not explain whether their claims of police collusion with extortion gangs met the legal threshold for considering Georgia unsafe in their circumstances.
Mr Justice Alexander Owens delivered judgment on 4 March 2025 in judicial review proceedings brought by P.P. and V.S. The court remitted both applications for reconsideration. It did not decide whether the couple are entitled to international protection or determine that Georgia is unsafe for them.
The couple, who are married, said they left Georgia for Ireland in February 2022. V.S. had borrowed money from a private lender in 2016 to open a beauty salon in Tbilisi. They said the business struggled during Covid-19, the debt was sold to extortionists, and they faced threats and violence, including an assault on P.P. and an attempt to run them down with a car. They said the extortionists warned them against going to police and claimed to have police connections.
The tribunal had accepted that the couple had a well-founded fear of persecution by debt-extorting criminals and faced a real risk of serious harm. It nevertheless found that Georgia was safe for them because they had not shown serious grounds to believe the state would fail to protect them.
The High Court rejected the couple’s argument that the tribunal could not consider whether Georgia provided adequate protection when applying the safe-country test. The judge said the tribunal could assess the strength of their information and could, in principle, find their claims too vague or unsupported. He also accepted that extortionists may threaten victims with consequences if they report them to police as a way of discouraging police involvement.
But the tribunal still had to examine the couple’s interview answers about alleged police links and explain why those claims did not meet the threshold. The judge said the decisions did not address that issue adequately. He also found it unreasonable to treat V.S.’s claim as unsupported because she had not identified a specific corrupt relationship between her extortionists and a particular police officer, which could be difficult for an applicant to verify.
The court’s ruling concerns the reasoning in the tribunal decisions. It requires reconsideration of the protection applications; it does not make the protection decision itself. The judge stated a provisional view that the couple should receive their costs, with an order to issue if no objection was notified within 21 days, or an oral hearing if either side sought to make submissions.