The High Court refused an applicant leave to bring a judicial review challenge to the Refugee Appeals Tribunal’s rejection of his asylum claim, finding he had not established substantial grounds to argue that its decision was invalid or should be quashed.
In a judgment delivered on 8 May 2008, Mr Justice Herbert also dismissed the application. The court considered the leave application only; it did not grant the requested certiorari order or declaration against the Tribunal decision.
The applicant, whose country of origin was Burundi, claimed asylum in Ireland in March 2004. He said he feared persecution because of his mixed Hutu-Tutsi heritage and alleged political involvement by family members. He claimed his father, two brothers and seven of his father’s relatives had been killed by Tutsi extremists.
The Refugee Appeals Tribunal rejected his appeal in May 2005, finding that he had not given a truthful account and had not established a well-founded fear of persecution. It also found no reasonable likelihood that his fears would be realised if he returned to Burundi.
The applicant challenged the Tribunal’s assessment of his credibility and its use of country information. Among other grounds, he argued that death certificates supported his account, that the Tribunal had misread information about risks to people in ethnically mixed families, and that it had wrongly relied on the absence of reports documenting the alleged killings.
Mr Justice Herbert held that the Tribunal was entitled to find the death certificates had no probative value in establishing that the named people were the applicant’s siblings or that they had been killed because of political involvement or mixed ethnicity. He also found that the Tribunal had considered the country information and the applicant’s submissions. The court said the applicant’s challenges to how the Tribunal weighed the evidence concerned the quality of its decision and did not establish a defective application of legal principles.
The judgment also addressed the Tribunal’s finding that it could not locate evidence of the naming custom the applicant described. The judge held that the Tribunal had disclosed the nature of its information search by recording that it had found no evidence, and that the law did not require it to provide particulars of the search.
The court concluded that none of the applicant’s grounds met the statutory threshold of substantial grounds for judicial review. It refused leave and dismissed the application.