The High Court has quashed the refusal of a Georgian applicant’s claim for subsidiary protection, finding that the International Protection Appeals Tribunal did not properly address accepted threats of serious harm or relevant evidence about police protection.
In a judgment delivered on 12 February 2021, Ms Justice Tara Burns said the tribunal had accepted the applicant’s account that associates of a politician repeatedly threatened him after he criticised the politician’s potato-importing business. The applicant said he feared being killed or seriously harmed if returned to Georgia.
The tribunal had refused refugee status because it found no Convention nexus; that part of its decision was not challenged. It also refused subsidiary protection, concluding that the feared harm did not meet the required severity threshold and that there was no clear evidence of future risk.
The High Court found that, having accepted threats which amounted to threats of serious harm, the tribunal was required to consider section 28(6) of the International Protection Act 2015. That provision treats past persecution, serious harm or direct threats as a serious indication of future risk unless there are good reasons to find the harm will not be repeated.
The tribunal gave no reference to section 28(6), the judge said, and did not make clear whether it had considered the presumption or what reasons rebutted it. The State’s argument that reasons could be inferred from the tribunal’s decision was insufficient. The judge rejected the applicant’s separate submission that “good reasons” must depend on changed circumstances, but said it was unnecessary to examine that issue further.
The court also found shortcomings in the tribunal’s treatment of country information and the applicant’s evidence. The tribunal had said there was nothing to suggest Georgian police would not protect the applicant or his family against a genuine threat. But the accepted account included that police took no action after the applicant reported a threat, refused to give him a copy of his complaint, and that a politician’s associate who told him to leave Georgia was a police officer. The judge said it was unclear whether this evidence had been considered; if it had, the tribunal gave no reasons for discounting it.
The court granted the relief sought in paragraphs (d)(1) and (d)(2) of the statement of grounds and ordered the applicant’s costs against the respondent, to be adjudicated if the parties could not agree. The judgment does not itself grant the applicant international protection.