The High Court refused leave to challenge the Refugee Appeals Tribunal’s decision to uphold the refusal of a Pakistani man’s application for refugee status. Ms Justice Stewart found no error in the Tribunal member’s assessment of the evidence or in the process used to reach the decision.
The applicant’s claim was that he feared persecution in Pakistan because of his Catholic beliefs and conversion from Islam. He said an extremist group had threatened and attacked him. The Refugee Applications Commissioner rejected his application, finding he had not shown a reasonable likelihood of persecution for a Convention reason. The Commissioner also found that he had failed, without reasonable cause, to apply for asylum as soon as reasonably practicable after arriving in Ireland.
The applicant challenged the Tribunal’s decision by judicial review. His submissions argued that the appeal had been decided without an oral hearing, that adverse credibility findings were inadequately supported, and that the Tribunal had made new findings without putting them to him. He also argued that insufficient weight had been given to a church letter that he said supported his account of practising Catholicism.
The respondents relied on inconsistencies and gaps in the applicant’s account of his conversion, his knowledge of Catholic practices, and his explanation for travelling through Belgium and Spain without seeking asylum there. The Tribunal had found that his stated reasons for delaying an application lacked cogency, and that the church letter appeared to be a device to help him remain in Ireland.
Justice Stewart said the court’s role on judicial review was to assess whether the decision-making process was legally sound, not to substitute its own view of the evidence for that of the decision-makers. She concluded that each of the Tribunal member’s findings was open to him on the evidence and that she could discern no error in how he conducted the hearing or reached his decision.
The court held that the Tribunal acted within its jurisdiction and that its decision complied with the relevant credibility assessment principles. It refused leave. The judgment does not grant refugee status or determine the underlying claim afresh.