The High Court extended the time for a judicial review application by a Ghanaian man, but dismissed his challenge to the International Protection Appeals Tribunal’s refusal of subsidiary protection.
The applicant, identified as S.N. (Ghana), said he was born in 1978, raised in a pagan tradition and later converted to Christianity. He claimed his mother’s uncle, a traditional chief, died in 2001 and that he was asked to assume the role in 2016. He gave differing accounts of who exercised the chieftaincy functions in the intervening years and how succession was to take place.
He also claimed he refused to take part in pagan rituals and faced violence and threats. After he complained to police, he said, elders engaged a mob to find him using a white powder. The tribunal rejected his account as not credible. The judgment records that he arrived in Ireland on 24 May 2016, that his asylum application was rejected on 18 November 2016, and that his subsidiary protection application was refused on 22 November 2017. Following an oral hearing on 7 March 2018, he was notified on 23 April that his appeal had failed.
In the judicial review, the applicant argued that the tribunal had relied on Western ideas of plausibility without properly considering Ghanaian cultural context. He also challenged its assessment of the succession account, the alleged persecution and the subsidiary protection claim. The judge said the tribunal had considered Ghanaian country information and accepted there could be a risk in refusing a chieftaincy offer, but had rejected the claim that such an offer was made. He noted that the applicant had given three versions of how succession would occur and two versions of who governed after the uncle’s death.
The judgment also records that the tribunal considered the applicant’s claim that white powder caused eye damage and that he was given medication. He produced no evidence of medication or eye damage, instead submitting a spectacle prescription. The tribunal had also noted that accounts of four attacks were identical in every detail.
The judge held that the credibility findings were open to the tribunal and that the court’s role on judicial review was limited to deciding whether the facts found by the administrative body could be sustained under judicial review principles. He found no independent error in how subsidiary protection was assessed, which was based on the elements of the claim the tribunal accepted.
The court ordered that time be extended up to the date the application was made, and dismissed the proceedings. It did not overturn the tribunal’s decision.