The High Court has rejected a Zimbabwean man's challenge to a decision refusing him refugee and subsidiary protection status in Ireland.
Mr Justice Conleth Bradley delivered judgment on July 10, 2026, dismissing judicial review proceedings brought by the anonymised applicant, G.M., against the International Protection Appeals Tribunal.
G.M., a subsistence farmer from Mathe in Zimbabwe, said he feared being killed by his uncle, whom he described as a local healer or witch doctor. His wife and three children remained in Zimbabwe.
The Tribunal accepted a central part of G.M.'s account which had previously been rejected by the International Protection Office. It found that around 2009 or 2010 his uncle drugged him and removed his right testicle as part of a ritual.
A March 2024 Spirasi medical report found physical scarring highly consistent with G.M.'s account and recorded symptoms consistent with depression and PTSD.
G.M. argued that the Tribunal failed to give sufficient weight to the PTSD evidence when describing parts of his later account as vague. He also argued that it failed properly to consider alleged death threats from his uncle and the statutory significance of the serious harm he had already suffered.
Bradley J rejected both grounds. He found that the Tribunal had expressly considered the Spirasi report, accepted the principal 2009/2010 incident and bore G.M.'s psychological condition in mind when assessing his later evidence. The court said the Tribunal was entitled to decide what weight to give the medical evidence.
The judge also held that the Tribunal correctly applied section 28(6) of the International Protection Act 2015. That provision treats previous persecution or serious harm as a serious indication of future risk unless there are good reasons to consider it will not be repeated.
The Tribunal had identified such reasons. G.M. remained near his uncle for about six years after the ritual, it did not accept that he suffered further serious violence during that period, and it found no persuasive evidence of a continuing intention by the uncle to harm him.
The judicial review reliefs were therefore refused, with costs and consequential matters left for a later hearing.