The High Court refused leave to bring judicial review proceedings against a decision rejecting a Cameroonian man’s asylum claim, finding no substantial ground to challenge the Refugee Appeals Tribunal’s assessment.
In a judgment delivered on 15 October 2010, Mr Justice Ryan considered the applicant’s challenge to the Tribunal’s decision of 15 April 2008. The Tribunal had affirmed the Refugee Applications Commissioner’s recommendation that he should not be declared a refugee. The court was deciding whether the applicant could proceed with judicial review, not whether he was entitled to refugee status.
The applicant, whose identity is anonymised in the judgment, said he feared persecution in Cameroon because of his membership of the Southern Cameroons National Council, a separatist political organisation. He challenged the Tribunal’s treatment of country information, medical and other documents, earlier Tribunal decisions, and his credibility.
The judge found that the Tribunal’s conclusion about the risk to an ordinary, low-profile SCNC member was logically supported by the country information before it. The applicant argued that reports about police abuse and politically motivated arrests supported his account of being targeted by a local politician. The court said those reports showed that such conduct could happen, but did not establish that it had happened to this applicant.
The judgment also addressed medical material. It described one report concerning alleged torture as unsatisfactory, saying its conclusion lacked a supporting basis. A separate report by a general practitioner, based on an examination years after the events described, found scarring consistent with trauma from blunt objects. The judge said it would have been preferable for the Tribunal to refer to that report specifically, but concluded that its limited findings did not undermine the decision. The court also upheld the Tribunal’s assessment of an arrest warrant, which it found appeared to contain altered dates and information that conflicted with the applicant’s account.
The court rejected the argument that the Tribunal had to analyse earlier positive asylum decisions from Cameroon in detail. It said each claim depended on its own facts and credibility assessment, while noting that a specific, relevant point drawn from another decision might require a response.
Concluding that the Tribunal had considered the evidence and given reasons for its credibility findings, the judge held that the criticisms did not establish a reviewable flaw. The application for leave was refused.