The High Court has refused an applicant leave to seek judicial review of the Refugee Appeals Tribunal’s rejection of her asylum claim, finding that the grounds pleaded did not establish substantial grounds for a challenge.
In a judgment delivered on 29 July 2016, Mr Justice Mac Eochaidh said the tribunal had considered the applicant’s medical report and had addressed her account of torture and gang rape. The court rejected the claim that the tribunal had failed to engage with either issue.
The applicant, whose identity is anonymised in the judgment, said she was born in Uganda and feared persecution because of her political involvement. She claimed she was detained after a political demonstration in 2007 and imprisoned for three months in 2011, where she was beaten, sexually assaulted and later released with instructions to spy on her political party. Her asylum claim had been rejected by the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner on credibility grounds.
A medical report by Dr Mona Sayegh described scars as typical of burns and bruising consistent with the applicant’s account of being beaten. It also recorded diagnoses of moderate depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. The tribunal accepted the medical evidence but said it could not establish how the injuries occurred, who caused them, or whether they were inflicted for the reasons claimed.
The High Court said the tribunal had explained its adverse credibility assessment, including its comparison of the applicant’s testimony about events in Uganda with her account of travel to Ireland. The judge said a decision-maker did not have to comment separately on every factual allegation where an overall credibility assessment had been explained. He also found the tribunal was entitled to consider whether the injuries might have resulted from events other than those described by the applicant.
The applicant argued that evidence of past serious harm required the tribunal to consider whether compelling reasons supported international protection, even if the harm was unlikely to recur. The court held that this duty did not arise because the applicant’s account had been rejected and the medical report, on its own, was not proof of past persecution or serious harm.
The judge also described one pleaded ground as incoherent and found no unlawful speculation or unfairness in the tribunal’s reasoning. The ruling was limited to the application for leave to seek judicial review: the court rejected that application and did not grant leave.