The High Court has formally set out its reasons for refusing leave to challenge a decision that rejected a Sudanese man’s refugee claim. The Court said the applicant had not established substantial grounds for judicial review. It did not grant leave to pursue the challenge, and did not consider whether an extension of time was warranted.
The leave application was heard in May 2009. The Court indicated at the end of the hearing that leave would be refused, but no order was made. In a judgment delivered on 10 December 2013, Ms Justice M. H. Clark gave reasons for that earlier decision.
The applicant had sought to quash a July 2007 decision by the Refugee Appeals Tribunal affirming the Refugee Applications Commissioner’s recommendation that he should not receive refugee status. He said he was from Sudan’s Darfur region and belonged to the Zaghawa tribe. His account was that government forces and Janjaweed attacked his village in December 2004, after which he fled with cattle and spent about 15 months in forests before leaving Sudan with his wife.
The Commissioner and Tribunal accepted that he was Sudanese and Zaghawa, but rejected the central account as lacking credibility. The Tribunal considered that maintaining and moving a herd in the conflict area was implausible, and that the country information did not support his account of an exemption from compulsory military service. The applicant challenged the credibility findings, arguing they relied on speculation and lacked proper reasons. He also argued that the Tribunal failed to apply a forward-looking assessment of risk and did not address a letter from Darfur Solidarity Ireland.
The High Court found that the Tribunal had addressed his account and assessed it against objective country information. It said the claim that he survived in the forest with cattle amid conflict, and that his wife travelled from Nyala and found him there, was so unlikely that it could not support an arguable challenge. The Court also noted the lack of personal documents and detail about his route and date of arrival in Ireland.
The Court accepted that the Tribunal decision did not include a forward-looking test. It considered one impossible because the applicant’s claim of past persecution had been rejected and he had expressed no other fear of return. It also found that the Darfur Solidarity Ireland letter could not establish that he was present during the attack or that his account of the following months was true.
The Court’s decision was limited to the application for leave to seek judicial review: it refused leave because substantial grounds had not been established. It did not proceed to a full judicial review hearing.