By Clara Finn
The High Court has refused an anonymised Somali asylum applicant leave to challenge a Refugee Appeals Tribunal decision which rejected her account on credibility grounds.
The applicant, identified as H.A.S., arrived in Ireland in August 2006 as an unaccompanied minor. She said she belonged to the minority Ashraf clan and had suffered serious persecution in Somalia, including kidnapping, sexual violence and the killing of her father by members of another ethnic group.
Her Tribunal appeal was delayed for about 10 months because of her distressed psychological condition. She had also said that she had received no formal education. In seeking judicial review, her lawyers argued that those circumstances should have played an important role in assessing how she gave her account.
Ms Justice Dunne accepted that age, psychological condition and education are relevant when assessing an asylum applicant's credibility. However, she found that the Tribunal member had expressly considered the applicant's age and the guidance applicable to separated children.
The court then examined five disputed credibility findings. These concerned the location where H.A.S. said she had been detained, the absence of intervention by local people when she was taken to collect firewood, the circumstances of her escape, how an uncle in the United States was located through contacts in Ethiopia, and her knowledge of recent conditions in Somalia.
H.A.S. argued that some conclusions involved conjecture, factual confusion or matters that had not properly been put to her. The respondents maintained that the findings were open to the Tribunal on the evidence.
The judge agreed with the respondents. She held that the relevant issues had been raised with H.A.S. and that she had been given an opportunity to answer them.
The court stressed that judicial review does not involve replacing the Tribunal's assessment of credibility with the High Court's own view. Because the applicant had not shown substantial grounds that the decision-making process was unlawful, leave to seek judicial review was refused.