The High Court has quashed a Refugee Appeals Tribunal decision rejecting an asylum applicant’s appeal, finding that the tribunal did not clearly assess two reports about a June 2008 prison escape in Guinea. The matter was remitted for reconsideration by a different tribunal member.
The anonymised applicant, identified in the judgment as C. B., said he had been arrested in Guinea after student protests and held in a Conakry prison. He claimed he escaped on 17 June 2008 when the military attacked the prison, and alleged he had been beaten and tortured while in custody. Those were his claims, not findings by the court.
The applicant sought judicial review of the tribunal’s 8 December 2009 decision affirming a recommendation that he not be recognised as a refugee. The High Court first extended the time to bring the proceedings until 18 March 2010, finding the delay was not the applicant’s personal fault and that the change of solicitor explained it. The judge noted that an affidavit from the former legal service should have addressed the initial delay.
The judge refused to let the applicant add late challenges concerning the tribunal’s treatment of a GP medical report and the absence of findings on his nationality or ethnicity, because no motion had been brought to amend the statement of grounds. The judgment said the medical report recorded a foot scar described as consistent with a cigarette burn and reduced vision in the left eye, but did not determine how the injuries occurred. The court also said the proposed nationality and ethnicity arguments would not assist the case.
The tribunal had made several adverse credibility findings, including about when the student group was formed, the applicant’s university start date, the group’s size and his account of who initiated a national strike. The applicant did not challenge those findings, but argued that the reports about the prison attack supported his central account of detention and escape.
The court considered the two articles dated 17 June 2008 significant and apparently reliable, noting that the Refugee Documentation Centre had treated them as reliable country-of-origin information. One reported that soldiers attacked Conakry’s Urban Security Station and detainees escaped. The tribunal’s decision did not refer to the articles individually, instead stating generally that it had considered the documentation and other material. The judge found that the reports required individual assessment and that the tribunal’s failure to address them clearly was an error.
The court also rejected the tribunal’s suggestion that the applicant should have claimed asylum in France, where he said he was briefly changing planes. The judge said there was no obligation to claim asylum in the first safe country and accepted that a person in transit and accompanied by a trafficker could continue to an intended destination. The court upheld the tribunal’s finding that the applicant had been vague or evasive, while cautioning that decision-makers should distinguish that from difficulty understanding questions, particularly when an interpreter is involved.
The order quashed the tribunal’s decision and remitted the matter for reconsideration before a different member. The judgment did not itself decide whether the applicant qualified for refugee status.