The High Court has dismissed a Pakistani man’s judicial review challenge to the rejection of his international protection application, finding that no illegality in the tribunal’s decision had been demonstrated.
The applicant, identified in the judgment as Z.N.U.D. (Pakistan), said he had been an ordinary member of the PAT political party and had faced threats and attacks from members of the PML-N. The International Protection Appeals Tribunal rejected his account, citing inconsistencies between his accounts. It also noted that medical reports from Pakistan referred to assaults by “unknown persons”, and that a GP letter did not provide objective support for a memory condition the applicant cited to explain inconsistencies.
The tribunal accepted that he was an ordinary party member but found that this did not establish grounds for protection in the circumstances. It also found that indiscriminate violence in the relevant area did not pose a threat to him solely because of his presence there.
The applicant’s challenge focused on whether the tribunal had properly assessed prospective risk, including in light of the 2014 Model Town Massacre in Lahore, in which some PAT members were victims. The High Court said the tribunal had made no finding about which branch of the party the applicant belonged to, and could not be faulted for failing to assess risk on the basis of a branch membership it had not found.
The judge added that, even if the applicant’s claimed membership of the Model Town branch were assumed, the tribunal was not generally required to analyse in detail an incident in which he was not involved. The court said evidence that ordinary party members had been victims in a particular past incident was not inconsistent with the tribunal’s conclusion that there was no evidence ordinary PAT members faced persecution, particularly given a change of government in Pakistan.
The applicant also challenged the Minister for Justice and Equality’s June 2019 decision rejecting his review application. His counsel accepted that this challenge depended on the challenge to the tribunal decision. The judge said the minister was entitled to rely on earlier protection refusals and found that the review challenge did not arise once the tribunal challenge failed.
The proceedings had been filed in January 2019, and the court had earlier extended time for bringing them. The judge said he probably would have maintained that extension if it had been significantly challenged, but did not need to decide the time issue because the case failed on its merits. The application was dismissed.