The High Court has dismissed a judicial review application challenging the Refugee Appeals Tribunal’s refusal of subsidiary protection to O.M.A., a man identified in the judgment as being from Sierra Leone. The court’s decision leaves the tribunal refusal in place.
Mr Justice Richard Humphreys delivered judgment on 12 June 2018. The applicant sought an order quashing the tribunal’s decision of 17 October 2016. His sole ground was that the tribunal had failed to consider whether he faced a real risk of serious harm as a trader subject to emergency laws in Sierra Leone.
The applicant said he had worked as a cobbler and that men had tried to recruit him into a criminal gang. He claimed he shut his shop and moved to Freetown, but the men found him there and burned the shop. He initially placed those events in late 2012, then changed the date to 2011 after authorities obtained a UK fingerprint match linked to a Nigerian citizen issued a visa in January 2012. The judgment recounts these as the applicant’s claims and the court’s account of the record.
The tribunal had rejected the material facts of his claim. Justice Humphreys found that this credibility decision was decisive: no part of the account, including the claim that the applicant was a trader, could be treated as accepted. He said the tribunal was not required to list and reject each element separately, and that a failure to discuss country information in detail did not itself establish that it had not been considered.
The judge also addressed the curfew argument on the assumption, contrary to the tribunal’s credibility finding, that the applicant was a trader. He said punishment for breaking a law did not by itself amount to serious harm. The judgment noted that the cited country material described curfews as public health measures intended to limit Ebola’s spread, and that the applicant’s submissions referred to only occasional arbitrary arrests and detentions. The claimed risk of inhumane prison conditions was described as speculative.
The court rejected the respondents’ argument that the application was out of time. It held that filing within the 28-day period stopped time, while noting a separate obligation to move an ex parte application promptly; the court found that obligation had been met in this case. The application was dismissed. The court did not quash the tribunal decision or grant subsidiary protection.