The High Court has quashed a Refugee Appeals Tribunal decision refusing an Iranian applicant a recommendation for refugee status after the tribunal relied on video clips the applicant said he had never submitted.
Mr Justice Mac Eochaidh ruled that the applicant’s account was uncontradicted by the respondents, who filed no replying affidavit. The judge found that the tribunal member had mistakenly believed the applicant supplied clips of demonstrations in Iran, analysed their content and concluded they contradicted the applicant’s account. The effect on the tribunal’s overall credibility decision could not be measured, but “its negative effect cannot have been small”, the judge said.
The applicant had claimed he was arrested and tortured in Iran because of his political involvement with the Green Movement. The Refugee Appeals Tribunal rejected his credibility and, on 31 July 2012, affirmed the Refugee Applications Commissioner’s recommendation against refugee status.
The applicant challenged the tribunal’s failure to assess whether he faced future persecution if returned to Iran. The High Court rejected that ground, finding that the tribunal had firmly rejected the account of past arrest and torture for political reasons, and that no accepted part of the account required consideration of future risk.
The court also rejected a separate challenge to the tribunal’s treatment of a medical report. The report by Dr Ciaran Leonard of the SPIRASI Centre for the Care of Survivors of Torture described the applicant’s injuries as “highly consistent” with his account under Istanbul Protocol guidelines. The judge said that, if the video evidence had been properly before the tribunal, its approach to the medical opinion would have been correct. But because a significant credibility finding was unsafe, the court could not determine whether the remaining credibility findings were rigorous enough to justify giving the report little weight.
The judgment granted leave to seek judicial review on the relevant part of one ground in the amended application and ordered the tribunal decision quashed. The matter was remitted for a hearing before a different person. The court did not determine whether the applicant qualified for refugee status.