The High Court has quashed a Refugee Appeals Tribunal decision refusing an anonymised applicant’s asylum appeal, ruling that two significant credibility concerns had not been put to him for a response. The matter was remitted to another Tribunal for further consideration.
The applicant, identified in the judgment as A. H. A., sought judicial review of the Tribunal’s 8 December 2006 decision, which had upheld the refusal of his asylum claim. The court had granted leave to seek certiorari in February 2009. The judicial review was focused on the Tribunal’s assessment of his credibility.
The applicant said he was a Somali national and a member of the Reer Hamar minority. He described being kidnapped and forced to work in 2002, his father, uncle and aunt being shot dead in 2003, and a second kidnapping in 2004. These were his account of events, not findings made by the High Court.
The judgment records that the Tribunal relied on several matters in finding his account not credible, including his description of escaping detention, discrepancies about how long he stayed with a neighbour, the absence of identification documents, his account of travel through Dublin Airport and evidence concerning a supporting witness. The High Court said most of these findings were within the Tribunal’s authority and that it was not the court’s role to substitute its own view of credibility.
Two issues required a different result. The Tribunal inferred from an answer in the asylum questionnaire that the applicant had unnamed dependants, despite other parts of the process recording that he had no children and treating him as a sole applicant. The court found that this concern had not arisen earlier and should have been put to him, particularly as he had not completed the questionnaire himself.
The Tribunal also treated his account that militia had taken his blood for injured fighters as implausible because a farmhouse would require sophisticated equipment and technical expertise to store blood. The High Court said that this concern about how the alleged transfusion could have taken place should also have been put to the applicant. The issue had not been raised in the questionnaire or earlier interviews.
The court concluded that both matters were significant to the Tribunal’s decision and that the applicant had not been given an opportunity to answer them. It therefore quashed the Tribunal’s decision and remitted the case to a different Tribunal. The judgment did not determine whether the applicant was credible or whether he qualified for asylum.