The High Court has quashed decisions refusing subsidiary protection and leave to remain to Suman Barua, finding that the decision maker failed to explain why documents that appeared to support his account were discounted or rejected.
Mr Justice Mac Eochaidh delivered the judgment on 9 November 2012. The judicial review was limited to whether the Minister’s decisions of 20 June 2011 had failed to address documents already on the applicant’s file. The court did not overturn the Refugee Appeals Tribunal’s refusal of refugee status or make findings on other issues that were not part of the case.
Barua, a Buddhist and a Bangladeshi national, arrived in Ireland in February 2010 and applied for asylum. He said that a dispute involving a local organisation and an influential Islamist led to threats, attacks on his family and an assault on him. Those were his claims, not findings made by the High Court.
Documents submitted during the asylum process included a training certificate, trade licence, photographs, and papers described in the judgment as relating to police allegations and an arrest warrant. The Refugee Appeals Tribunal rejected his refugee claim on credibility grounds. The High Court noted that the tribunal report referred to concerns about forged documents in Bangladesh but did not identify any of Barua’s documents as forged or make a finding that they were fraudulent.
When the Minister’s decision maker later refused subsidiary protection, the report stated that the documents had been read and considered. But the court found that it did not explain what weight, if any, they had been given or why their apparent corroborative value was rejected. The judge said that where such documents are discounted, the decision maker must explain the reason. Referring generally to the prevalence of forged documents was not enough; any concern that Barua’s papers were tainted should have been stated and its basis explained.
The judge described the tribunal’s credibility concerns as marginal for the purpose of assessing whether they justified giving the documents no weight. He did not set those findings aside or decide that Barua’s account was true. He also made observations about other parts of the protection decision, including its treatment of personal circumstances and serious harm, but expressly made no findings on those matters because they were outside the judicial review grounds.
The court rejected the Minister’s argument that Barua was barred from relief because he had not challenged the tribunal’s credibility findings or raised objections to them in his subsidiary protection application. It ordered the decisions under challenge to be quashed and said it would hear the parties on any further orders that might be needed.