The High Court refused leave for a Pakistani national to challenge the Refugee Appeals Tribunal’s rejection of his asylum appeal, finding no grounds to quash the tribunal’s decision.
In a judgment delivered on 12 January 2016, Ms Justice Stewart said the tribunal had considered the applicant’s claim and the documents he submitted. The case was a judicial review of a decision dated 8 May 2012. The court’s role was to examine whether the decision-making process was legally flawed, not to reassess the applicant’s credibility.
The applicant said his father’s business partner took money from the family business in 1988, leaving his father unable to repay relatives who had lent him money. He claimed the creditors threatened the family and that he feared being killed if returned to Pakistan. He also said he and his father were shot at in 2009, and that police did not take satisfactory action after being informed. These were the applicant’s claims, not findings made by the High Court.
The Refugee Appeals Tribunal had rejected his account as lacking credibility. It cited missing identity documents and police reports, inconsistencies concerning his Irish visa application, his return to Pakistan in 2010, and the limits of documents he provided. The tribunal noted that an X-ray photocopy showed the applicant’s father had been shot, but said it did not establish how the injury occurred or connect it to the alleged money dispute.
The applicant argued that the tribunal made credibility findings without giving him a chance to respond, failed to take account of explanations and evidence, and did not assess the risk of future persecution. The respondents disputed that the decision was legally flawed. The High Court rejected the claim that the applicant had been unaware of the visa inconsistency: it was addressed in the earlier refugee applications report and raised in his appeal notice, the judge said.
The judge accepted that decision-makers in papers-only appeals must take extreme care because applicants cannot correct errors through oral evidence. She nevertheless concluded that the tribunal’s decision, read as a whole, complied with the applicable principles for assessing credibility and gave clear reasons for rejecting the core of the claim.
The court refused leave and found no grounds to quash the tribunal decision. It did not grant the requested certiorari or order a fresh appeal hearing.