The High Court has quashed a Refugee Appeals Tribunal decision rejecting Suha Nateel and three of her children’s asylum claims, ruling that a central part of the Tribunal’s credibility assessment was unreasonable. The court remitted the case to the Tribunal for fresh consideration in light of the judgment.
The Tribunal had rejected the claims on credibility grounds in December 2009. The family challenged that decision by judicial review, arguing that the Tribunal had fundamentally mishandled its assessment of credibility and failed to analyse the core of their claim.
The claims arose from events in Gaza. Ms Nateel said she had worked for the Society Voice Foundation, which counselled teenage female students on issues including women’s roles, Islamic dress and domestic violence. The applicants alleged that Hamas and its supporters viewed the foundation with suspicion, that Ms Nateel lost her teaching post as a result, and that the foundation’s offices were closed. They also said their family home was attacked because Ms Nateel’s brother-in-law was a senior member of the Fatah security and intelligence unit. Ms Nateel said her husband had been questioned by Hamas about US government funding for the foundation. These were claims before the Tribunal, not findings by the High Court.
The High Court focused on the Tribunal’s use of the husband’s decision not to seek asylum as a reason to doubt Ms Nateel’s credibility. The husband’s affidavit explained that he had lawful residence in Ireland and the UK, was studying for a doctorate in England, and needed to travel for study, family and foundation work. He said an asylum application could complicate his status and restrict travel. The High Court noted that this explanation had not been controverted and found no evidential basis for the Tribunal’s conclusion that it was not credible or well founded.
The judge said the Tribunal could not properly infer that Ms Nateel lacked a well-founded fear of persecution from her husband’s failure to apply for asylum without adequately evaluating his explanation. Because that reasoning was central to the adverse credibility decision, it was sufficient to quash the Tribunal’s decision.
The judgment also criticised the Tribunal’s reliance on a newspaper article about the husband’s UK work, noting that the disputed words were the journalist’s, not a quotation attributed to him, and that a later article referred to his return to a UK post. It said the Tribunal’s comments about his salary were unwarranted. The court also held that the family’s explanation for travelling to Belfast for the birth of their Irish-citizen son could be rejected as unconvincing, but that the issue was fundamentally irrelevant to the asylum claims’ credibility.
The High Court did not decide whether the applicants qualified for asylum. It quashed the Tribunal’s decision and remitted the matter for fresh consideration.