The High Court has granted an Iraqi asylum seeker leave to seek judicial review of a decision refusing his asylum application, finding substantial grounds to argue that the Refugee Appeals Tribunal’s reasoning was unreasonable in law.
In a judgment delivered on 11 January 2012, Mr Justice Hogan said the challenge concerned the Tribunal’s 22 July 2008 decision. The applicant, identified in the judgment as B. A. O., is described there as a 21-year-old Iraqi national of Kurdish ethnicity who arrived in Ireland in December 2007 and sought asylum.
The applicant said his father had been a senior member of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party and that both his parents were killed in October 2007 when a hand grenade was thrown at their car as they went to a market. He argued that the attack was connected to his father’s political background. The Tribunal had concluded there was insufficient evidence to establish that the killings were targeted, and considered that the attack could have been part of the wider violence and insecurity in Iraq.
Justice Hogan identified two problems with that reasoning. First, he said it did not account for the applicant’s claim that his family had spent much of the period in hiding to avoid possible revenge attacks. The fact that the killings happened more than four years after the Ba’ath regime fell did not, by itself, rule out a revenge attack, he said.
The judge also pointed to country information, including a July 2007 United Nations humanitarian office release reporting that former Ba’athists were being targeted in southern Iraq. He said the Tribunal member could not justly ignore relevant country information that contradicted a key assumption, and that reasons should be given when relevant documentary information is rejected.
Second, Justice Hogan said there were substantial grounds to argue that the applicant should have received the benefit of the doubt. The Tribunal had made no specific finding that the applicant lacked credibility, and the country information suggested revenge attacks of this kind were common, the judge said.
The court’s decision was limited to granting leave to apply for judicial review under section 5(2) of the Illegal Immigrants (Trafficking) Act 2000. It did not decide whether the applicant qualified for asylum or quash the Tribunal’s refusal. The judgment said the precise form of the order would be discussed with counsel.