The High Court has quashed a decision refusing international protection to a Somali man after finding that his credibility was assessed without proper regard to country information about Al-Shabaab and, in part, through speculation.
A.H.O. claimed that Al-Shabaab killed his father in 2020 after he refused to surrender the bus he was driving. He also said members of the group later approached him at his shop in 2022 and demanded information about Somali soldiers protecting Turkish construction workers nearby. He said two gunmen subsequently fired at him after he refused to cooperate.
The International Protection Appeals Tribunal rejected his account as not credible in September 2024. Among other matters, it questioned why Al-Shabaab would need him as an informant, why it required information about soldiers' lunchtime movements and how he escaped two armed men.
Mr Justice Barry O'Donnell held that these questions could not properly be assessed without engaging with relevant country-of-origin information. Material before the Tribunal recorded that Al-Shabaab uses civilians as informants in areas it does not control, recruits through threats and violence, targets perceived government-linked persons and has carried out indiscriminate attacks on civilians.
The judge said this information potentially placed significant parts of A.H.O.'s account within the known operating practices of the group.
The court also criticised the Tribunal's description of the shooting as an "assassination attempt" and its reasoning that his escape undermined credibility. The Tribunal, the judge held, had effectively speculated about the intentions and competence of the gunmen.
Not every argument succeeded. The court rejected the challenge to the Tribunal's treatment of the absence of documentary corroboration and accepted, albeit with some reluctance, that it had been entitled to identify certain inconsistencies in A.H.O.'s accounts.
The Tribunal decision was nevertheless quashed because the unlawful reasoning affected central credibility findings. The protection claim will now return for a fresh hearing before a different tribunal member.