The High Court quashed the Refugee Applications Commissioner’s section 13 report on an asylum applicant identified as E.C., finding that the report wrongly excluded her account of alleged mistreatment in 2005 from the assessment of her later claim.
In a judgment delivered on 23 July 2010, Mr Justice Cooke ruled that the Commissioner had made a mistake by assessing the woman’s fear of persecution only by reference to events after she returned to the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2006. The court said previous persecution could indicate a well-founded fear of future harm, and that her account was that events in March 2007 had renewed an earlier fear.
The woman and her husband, identified as E.C. and N.O.C., and their minor son had applied for asylum in Ireland in April 2007. The husband said he had served in the Congolese army, had been arrested in 2005 after refusing to shoot people at a demonstration, and was later abducted and threatened by soldiers in March 2007. His wife said she was arrested and beaten while authorities sought her husband, then went to Belgium and claimed asylum. She said she returned to Congo after hearing her husband had been released.
The Commissioner’s reports, issued on 8 December 2007, recommended against their claims, citing credibility concerns about the alleged events in 2007. The wife’s report expressly excluded the 2005 events from its assessment. After the report, her solicitors asked the Commissioner to obtain the Belgian asylum file. The request was refused on the basis that the Dublin II Regulation allowed information requests only to determine which state was responsible for examining the claim. The High Court held that interpretation was mistaken: the Commissioner could request relevant information about the grounds of an asylum claim, but was not obliged to do so.
The judge said the Belgian file might support the woman’s account, but might also undermine it. The judgment noted that her Belgian claim was apparently made under a different name, that she had initially denied being in Belgium, and that she had not produced evidence of returning to Congo. The court quashed her report both because the 2005 evidence had been wrongly excluded and to give the Commissioner an opportunity to consider whether to request the Belgian file. It did not order the Commissioner to seek it or determine the merits of the asylum claim.
The court refused to quash the separate reports concerning the husband and son. It found that the husband’s evidence about the alleged 2005 mistreatment had been considered and that the report gave specific credibility reasons. Any reassessment belonged in the asylum appeal process. The husband and son could appeal, and the parties could ask to delay the husband’s appeal until the wife’s new report was issued. The court made an order of certiorari only in the wife’s case, 2008 No. 181 JR.