The High Court has refused an applicant’s judicial review challenge to a Refugee Appeals Tribunal decision rejecting his asylum appeal, finding that an information notice was given orally rather than in writing but that the procedure caused no substantial unfairness.
The judgment, delivered by Mr Justice Birmingham on 19 November 2009, concerned a tribunal decision dated 4 October 2006. The applicant, whose identity is anonymised in the judgment, said he was from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and had been involved with the youth wing of the opposition UDPS party. He alleged that military personnel detained and abused him in 2002. The tribunal rejected his account and affirmed the Refugee Applications Commissioner’s recommendation that he was not a refugee.
The applicant was granted leave to challenge the decision on four grounds. These included claims that the tribunal relied on undisclosed country-of-origin information, failed to provide written details of its nature and source as required by section 16(8) of the Refugee Act 1996, mischaracterised what he had said about newspaper coverage, and failed to put possible document forgery to him.
The judge rejected the latter two grounds. He found that the newspaper reference was an aside that did not affect the decision’s meaning. The tribunal had not found that the applicant’s documents were forged; it had questioned whether they were necessarily authentic, and the issue had been addressed at the hearing.
The remaining challenge concerned information the tribunal member said was available through the EIN website about the treatment of UDPS members. The judge traced the material to an Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada report, a source he described as widely respected. He found that the tribunal had technically failed to comply with section 16(8), because the information was not furnished in writing.
That failure did not, in the circumstances, require the tribunal decision to be quashed. The judge found that the applicant and his advisers had been told the nature and source of the material, heard extracts read aloud, and responded by submitting further country information. They did not seek an adjournment or suggest at the hearing that the procedure disadvantaged them.
The judge also concluded that the tribunal’s decision rested on its assessment of credibility, including the applicant’s account of detention, his knowledge of the JUDPS and political developments, and the account concerning crocodiles. The country information about conditions for UDPS members after the political transition was not the decision’s central basis. The court refused the relief sought; it did not set aside the tribunal’s decision.