The High Court quashed an International Protection Appeals Tribunal decision refusing a Bahraini man subsidiary protection, finding that the tribunal had relied on a 2017 country report to assess his account of events in 2011 without first giving him a chance to respond.
In a judgment delivered on 29 July 2019, Mr Justice Max Barrett said the tribunal’s approach breached constitutional justice. The man, identified as Mr B, claimed he had suffered brutality and harassment at the hands of Bahraini officials. The tribunal had affirmed an International Protection Officer decision that he should receive neither refugee status nor subsidiary protection.
The court said Mr B had not been told that the tribunal intended to use a 2017 US State Department report to assess the credibility of his account of arrest and release from detention in 2011. Given the report’s distance from the events in question, and the unsettled situation in Bahrain during the 2011 Pearl Uprising, the court said the tribunal should have explained its approach and invited submissions.
Mr Justice Barrett also found that the tribunal materially erred in law and fact by assessing the plausibility of the 2011 account against information about Bahrain in 2017 rather than relevant information from 2011.
A separate error concerned a psychiatric report dated 3 August 2018. The tribunal had criticised the report for not using a scale in paragraph 187 of the Istanbul Protocol. The court said that scale addressed physical symptoms, while the report concerned psychological symptoms, and found the tribunal had erred in law.
The court also agreed that the tribunal had erred by questioning why Mr B’s wife was not relying on events in Bahrain in her German asylum claim. As a Syrian national, her claim would be assessed by German authorities with reference to Syria. However, the court accepted that the tribunal’s remark was peripheral and had no impact on its decision.
Despite noting that the tribunal had made other adverse credibility findings that were not challenged, the court held that the errors were material. It granted certiorari, quashed the tribunal’s decision and remitted the matter to the tribunal for fresh consideration. The court did not itself determine Mr B’s entitlement to international protection.