The High Court refused an applicant leave to seek judicial review of a 2009 Refugee Appeals Tribunal decision rejecting his asylum claim on credibility grounds. The challenge before the court was limited to whether the Tribunal had disregarded medical evidence relating to the applicant’s memory.
The applicant, a Nigerian national, said he had investigated corruption involving officials and politicians and was targeted, imprisoned, tortured and mistreated by police. The Tribunal rejected his claim. In one credibility finding, it considered that he should have been able to give more details about people he said were involved in corrupt contracts.
The applicant argued that medical evidence about poor memory should have been considered before the Tribunal relied on his inability to recall some names and other details. At an earlier interview, he had said his memory was affected by meningitis. Reports submitted to the Tribunal referred to memory or concentration difficulties, depression, and possible cognitive impairment associated with medical conditions.
Justice Colm Mac Eochaidh said the references to memory were brief and peripheral in the reports. In his assessment, the doctors mainly recorded the applicant’s account of memory problems; the reports did not document objective testing of his memory. The reports were directed principally at other matters, and had not been submitted to the Tribunal to support a case that medically diagnosed memory loss explained the gaps in recall.
The judge noted that the applicant had shown strong recall of complex details over many years, alongside some difficulty remembering particular matters. He distinguished earlier cases cited by the applicant, where medical evidence supporting key details of an account of torture had not been adequately addressed. He said those cases did not assist here because the applicant had not advanced a case based on diagnosed memory loss during the asylum process.
The court acknowledged that the Tribunal decision did not refer to the reports’ mentions of memory difficulties. It nevertheless found no fault in the Tribunal’s decision, saying the argument that diagnosed poor memory explained the missing details had been constructed after the claim had been presented to the first-instance and appeal bodies.
The court’s order was to refuse leave to seek judicial review. It did not quash the Tribunal’s decision.