The High Court quashed a Refugee Appeals Tribunal decision refusing an asylum appeal after finding two errors in its assessment of the applicant’s credibility. The court allowed the applicant to seek judicial review and directed that the appeal be reconsidered by a different tribunal member.
The judgment, delivered by Mr Justice Anthony Barr on 2 October 2014, concerned an applicant identified as P. M. He claimed he was gay and had faced threats and violence in Malawi because of his sexual orientation. Those claims were part of his asylum account; the High Court was reviewing the legality of the tribunal’s decision, not deciding the asylum claim itself.
The tribunal had found the applicant’s account lacked credibility. The High Court held that it made a clear factual error by treating all the threatening letters as having arrived before the applicant went to Balaka. The evidence described earlier letters telling him to leave his home, followed by a further anonymous letter after he returned, threatening to report him to police. The judge said the timing of that later letter was important because its receipt appeared to prompt the applicant to leave Malawi and seek asylum in Ireland.
The court also found error in the tribunal’s adverse credibility finding based on the applicant not seeking asylum in Kenya or the Netherlands. The tribunal had relied selectively on passages from refugee-law professor James Hathaway’s book. The judge said the passages did not support a requirement to claim asylum in the first safe country. He found the applicant had given credible reasons for not applying in those countries.
Other challenges did not lead the court to quash the decision. The judge accepted that the tribunal had effectively found the applicant was from Malawi. He found no adverse credibility finding based on uncertainty about when the applicant realised he was gay, and read the tribunal’s references to his socialising in Ireland as drawing no negative inference. The judge also accepted the respondents’ position that the visible tooth and facial injuries did not establish who caused them or why, and did not require a specific assessment in the circumstances.
The court did not replace the tribunal’s overall credibility assessment with its own. Because the tribunal said it considered its adverse findings cumulatively, the judge could not determine what its decision would have been without the two errors. He therefore quashed the 23 November 2010 decision and returned the matter to the tribunal for reconsideration by a different member.