The High Court has granted an applicant leave to seek judicial review on two grounds in a challenge to the refusal of her refugee claim: an alleged material error about her interview evidence and the Tribunal’s failure to consider country of origin information (COI).
Mr Justice Ryan delivered the judgment on 8 October 2010. The applicant, a Belarusian national identified as H. R., sought to challenge a Refugee Appeals Tribunal decision dated 7 May 2008 affirming a recommendation that she should not be declared a refugee. The court also accepted her explanation for a short delay in starting proceedings and found sufficient reason to extend time.
The key factual issue concerned when the applicant had mentioned her brother’s imprisonment. The Tribunal’s reasoning treated the omission as having occurred at her section 11 interview, where the notes were read back to her and signed. The High Court said the interview notes showed that she had discussed her brother at the section 11 interview. The omission was instead at her earlier preliminary section 8 interview, where she blamed the interpreter. The judge said the Tribunal had attached significance to an omission in different circumstances and found substantial grounds to argue that the mistaken attribution undermined its reasoning.
The second ground concerned 21 COI reports submitted on the applicant’s behalf. The judgment said the Tribunal’s decision did not refer to them and that at least some could support aspects of her account, including the reported detention and later disappearance of her brother and his apparent emergence in a psychiatric hospital. The judge found substantial grounds to argue that credibility should have been assessed in the context of that material and that its omission breached fair procedures and relevant refugee protection provisions.
The court did not decide whether the applicant was a refugee or whether the Tribunal’s decision was ultimately invalid. It granted leave to argue those two grounds. It refused leave on the other grounds considered, including delay as a standalone basis, the treatment of previous Tribunal decisions, whether the Tribunal had to put each credibility concern to the applicant, and several challenges to its assessment of her claim.