The High Court has ruled that a decision refusing a Georgian woman’s appeal for international protection breached fair procedures, finding that key credibility conclusions relied on a false premise and an issue that had not been put to her.
Mr Justice Barr delivered the judgment on 4 November 2022. The challenge concerned a December 2021 decision by the International Protection Appeals Tribunal, which had upheld the refusal of refugee status and subsidiary protection. The court said that decision must be set aside. It did not determine the applicant’s protection claim or make a final order in the proceedings at this stage.
The applicant said she and her daughter had faced threats in Georgia connected to her husband’s work as a private security guard. She alleged that, in October 2017, a man who entered her home threatened and sexually assaulted her, and demanded that her husband return. She said she told her husband about a violent attack that night but did not disclose its sexual nature. The account of the alleged events was part of her claim; the court’s ruling concerned how the tribunal assessed her credibility.
The tribunal had found it damaging to her credibility that her husband had not mentioned an October 2017 attack in his own protection claim. But the High Court examined his interview and found that he had referred to a later visit by the men, saying they threatened and verbally abused his wife and pushed her. The court said the question put to the applicant—that her husband had not mentioned the attack at all—was based on a factually incorrect premise. It found it unfair to make an adverse credibility finding based on her answer to that question.
The court also found that the applicant had not been given an opportunity at her appeal hearing to explain why she had not called her husband as a witness. Her reason, as presented to the High Court, was that he did not know the assault had been sexual and she did not want him to learn that she had been raped. The tribunal had treated his absence as part of the basis for its negative credibility finding without putting that issue to her, the court said.
The High Court held that both matters breached fair procedures and were sufficient to set aside the tribunal’s 13 December 2021 decision. It did not address the other pleaded grounds, which were not seriously pursued at the hearing. The parties were given seven days to file brief submissions on the terms of the final order and costs, with the case listed for mention on 23 November 2022.