The High Court has rejected an appeal by Ilirjan Gashi and confirmed the revocation of his refugee status, finding that his original application was based on material information that had been withheld from Irish authorities.
Mr Justice Cooke said the appeal under section 21(5) of the Refugee Act 1996 was not limited to reviewing the process used by the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform. The court could consider evidence presented in the appeal and decide whether the original refugee declaration had relied on information that was false or misleading in a material particular.
Mr Gashi was declared a refugee in 2001 after the Refugee Appeals Tribunal accepted his account that he had fled Kosovo after being beaten by police who suspected him of links to the Kosovo Liberation Army. The Tribunal found that he remained at risk of persecution. An earlier negative recommendation by the Refugee Applications Commissioner had also found him credible, but concluded that the risk no longer continued.
In 2008, UK authorities told the Minister’s officials that a fingerprint taken in the UK matched a record for an Albanian national. Mr Gashi accepted that the fingerprint was his, but denied telling UK authorities that he was an Albanian national. He said he had identified himself as being from Kosovo and of Albanian ethnicity.
The Minister proposed revoking his refugee status in 2009, saying information from the UK indicated that he was an Albanian national rather than from Kosovo. Mr Gashi did not make representations against the proposal. The Minister revoked his status in March 2010 on the same stated ground.
The judge said the court did not need to resolve the dispute about how Mr Gashi had described his nationality to UK officials. Evidence before the court showed that he had made an asylum application in the UK, stayed there for a fortnight and then travelled to Ireland, but had not disclosed the UK claim. His Irish asylum questionnaire said he did not know which countries he had travelled through and that he had not claimed asylum elsewhere. He also gave a travel account that the judge found untrue.
The court held that concealment of the UK asylum application was material because it could have affected the credibility assessment and led to further inquiries or a transfer under the Dublin arrangements then in place. The judge rejected the argument that the omitted information had to be decisive in the narrower sense that it supplied the facts establishing his fear of persecution. He said the question was whether the application might have been assessed differently if the full information had been known.
The judge said revocation did not decide that Mr Gashi could never qualify as a refugee. It did not prevent a new application or a request to remain if he could show that he faced a risk on return to Kosovo. The prohibition on refoulement continued to apply. The court’s order was to reject the appeal and confirm the revocation.