The High Court has refused an Albanian applicant’s challenge to the rejection of his international protection claim, finding no error in the tribunal’s credibility assessment. The court also said the tribunal’s separate, alternative assessment of the claim was unnecessary and would not review it.
The applicant, identified in the judgment as FL, entered Ireland on 30 December 2018 and applied for international protection on 2 January 2019. He said he had been in a relationship with a Muslim woman in Albania and that, after it ended, her brother threatened him, assaulted him with others and later produced a gun. He claimed he would face persecution or serious harm if returned. These were allegations; the tribunal rejected his account.
The International Protection Office refused the claim, and the International Protection Appeals Tribunal rejected an appeal following an oral hearing. The High Court granted leave for judicial review in March 2020. FL argued that the tribunal had wrongly assessed his credibility and its alternative findings.
The court rejected his challenges to the tribunal’s treatment of the relationship’s secrecy, his decision not to seek hospital care, his return to the area where he said he was attacked, and his failure to contact police. It held that the tribunal could find discrepancies in his accounts and that his explanation for not going to police was inadequate. The court also found that the country information cited about police performance and corruption did not establish that he could not have sought police help, particularly as no political, criminal, financial or police connections of the alleged assailant had been asserted.
The court said the material on early marriage related to underage people from Roma and Egyptian communities and did not support FL’s claim about an “old law” requiring marriage. It noted that no independent country information had been provided to establish the claimed honour-based marriage practice. The tribunal’s rejection of FL’s credibility, the court said, was open to it.
After rejecting the account, the tribunal had considered the claim in the alternative, including state protection and internal relocation. The High Court called that exercise unnecessary and did not review those alternative conclusions. It said the credibility finding had decided the claim, so there was no need to determine protection or relocation issues based on events the tribunal did not accept had occurred.
The court refused the relief sought and ordered FL to pay the respondents’ costs. It said any future decision on permission to remain should not take account of the tribunal’s alternative considerations.