The High Court has quashed a decision refusing a Bangladeshi applicant’s appeal for refugee status and ordered a fresh hearing before a different Tribunal Member.
In a judgment delivered on 26 January 2016, Ms Justice Faherty granted leave for judicial review after a telescoped hearing. The court found that the Refugee Appeals Tribunal’s decision could not stand because of problems with its credibility assessment and its analysis of whether the Bangladeshi state could protect the applicant. It remitted the case to the Tribunal for a de novo hearing. The court did not decide whether the applicant qualified as a refugee.
The anonymised applicant said he was a Buddhist from Bangladesh. He claimed that people connected with a local Muslim school obstructed a boundary fence project at a Buddhist crematorium in 2008, and that he, his father and others were injured in a later confrontation. He also alleged that weapons were planted at a youth club in 2009 to implicate him, that police sought to arrest him, and that his complaints about earlier threats went unanswered. These were claims made in his protection case, not findings by the High Court.
The Tribunal had rejected the appeal, finding that the applicant lacked a subjective and credible fear of persecution. It also made alternative findings on state protection, relocation within Bangladesh and whether the case concerned prosecution for alleged weapons offences rather than persecution. The High Court upheld several individual findings, including findings about his travel route and identity documents. It also held that the Tribunal had wrongly relied on the applicant’s failure to seek asylum in a safe country en route: he had not claimed Ireland was the first safe country he reached, so the relevant statutory provision did not apply.
The court found a more fundamental problem in the Tribunal’s reliance on credibility findings from the initial refugee assessment. The Tribunal had said the applicant had not fully addressed several points but, apart from one example concerning his father’s criminal proceedings, did not identify them. The court said the applicant’s explanation about his absence when his father was sentenced had to be weighed, and that the decision did not show this had been done. The Tribunal’s adoption of the earlier findings without identifying them or explaining its reasoning demonstrated insufficient independent consideration, the court held.
The court also found that the Tribunal’s state-protection analysis did not properly address the applicant’s claim that police had failed to act after the alleged attack on him and his father. Relevant country information described problems with police effectiveness and delays in assisting religious minorities facing harassment and violence. The court said that information needed a more considered assessment alongside the applicant’s account.
Because the credibility assessment was cumulative and the alternative findings did not cure the errors, the court held the decision could not be sustained. Its order quashed the Tribunal decision and sent the matter back for a new hearing before a different member.