The High Court has dismissed a husband and wife’s judicial review challenges to decisions rejecting their international protection appeals, finding no basis to disturb the appeals tribunal’s credibility assessments.
Mr Justice Richard Humphreys delivered the judgment on 26 November 2018. The couple, identified in the proceedings as M.S.R. (Pakistan) and M.S., had sought certiorari of decisions by the International Protection Appeals Tribunal (IPAT). That remedy would quash the decisions. The court dismissed both applications; it did not itself decide their protection claims afresh.
The husband alleged persecution in Pakistan linked to a land dispute, and the couple said they faced further persecution after marrying secretly. They challenged the tribunal’s treatment of several items, including a first information report (FIR), newspaper reports and a medical report concerning a scar on the husband’s leg.
On the FIR, the judge said the tribunal had received a photocopy and a certified translation, but there was no certification that the photocopy was a true copy of the original. He found the applicants had not laid the evidential foundation for their argument about the stamp on the document. The court also rejected their arguments about the newspapers and medical report: the tribunal was entitled to find the newspaper copies unconvincing and the scar’s cause uncertain.
The couple argued that the tribunal had assessed their accounts unfairly, relied on speculation and failed to focus on the core of their claims. The judge found those arguments had not established unfairness or legal error. He said credibility could be assessed in light of the full evidence, and that the tribunal could draw adverse inferences from the couple’s failure to seek asylum while living in the UK.
The couple’s protection claims were rejected by the International Protection Office on 13 October 2017. Their appeals were dismissed by IPAT on 23 April 2018. The High Court had granted leave to seek judicial review on 11 June 2018. In its judgment, the court concluded that the tribunal was entitled to reject the couple’s accounts and dismissed the applications.