The High Court has granted a Palestinian asylum seeker leave to seek judicial review of a Refugee Appeals Tribunal decision rejecting his claim for refugee status. The court found substantial grounds to argue that the tribunal’s adverse credibility finding on the central issue of his claim lacked a sufficient rational basis.
The ruling, delivered by Mr Justice Michael Peart on 31 July 2007, concerned an application for leave only. The judge did not decide whether the applicant was a refugee, whether his account was true, or whether the tribunal’s decision should ultimately be quashed. He granted leave on the grounds set out in the applicant’s statement of grounds.
The applicant, identified in the judgment as H.Y., is described as a Palestinian from Gaza. He claimed that he was wanted by Israeli forces and that his name was on a list which Palestinian authorities had agreed to hand over. He said he left Gaza in 2004 after being told to do so, fearing detention and transfer to Israeli custody. Those were his claims, not findings made by the High Court.
The Refugee Appeals Tribunal had affirmed an earlier recommendation against refugee status. It found aspects of his account implausible, including that he would have become a focus of attention in 2004 after being released from Israeli detention in 2000 and remaining “trouble-free” for four years. The tribunal also considered it implausible that the Palestinian Authority would hand over one of its own citizens based on a list supplied unilaterally by Israel. It raised doubts about his journey through checkpoints and international borders using false documents.
The applicant argued that the credibility assessment was inadequately reasoned and insufficiently informed by country of origin material. The respondents submitted that the tribunal had explained its reasons and was entitled to assess the account as a whole.
Justice Peart said the travel-related doubts appeared peripheral to the central question of whether the applicant was on a list and would have been handed over. He considered it substantially arguable that those doubts had unduly influenced the tribunal’s assessment of the central issue. The judgment identified little evidence that the possibility of such a list, or Palestinian Authority compliance with a request, had been thoroughly examined using country information. The court said the reasoning on that issue could be argued to rest on conjecture and “gut-feeling”.
The judge stressed that the High Court could not replace the tribunal’s credibility decision with its own. His decision was that the applicant had shown substantial grounds to argue for the requested relief. The substantive judicial review remained to be determined.