The High Court has quashed decisions refusing international protection appeals by an Albanian couple and sent the appeals back to the International Protection Appeals Tribunal (IPAT) for fresh consideration.
In a judgment delivered on 29 April 2021, Mr Justice Max Barrett found serious problems with the Tribunal’s reasoning on the husband’s credibility. The court said those findings were closely linked to the wife’s account of intimidation, so an order quashing the decision in his case also had to apply to hers.
The couple, identified in the judgment as Mr and Ms Sula to protect their privacy, had challenged two IPAT decisions affirming refusals of protection. The husband said he supported Albania’s Democratic Party and had been abducted and assaulted during the 2017 election campaign after persuading people to vote for the opposition. He also said his wife was threatened and pushed off a bus days later. These were claims made by the applicants; the High Court did not determine that the incidents occurred.
The Tribunal accepted that the husband was an active Democratic Party member and that a medical report supported his claim to have been struck near his right eye. It rejected his account of abduction, however, finding that the type of intimidation he described lacked support in country-of-origin information (COI). The Tribunal also accepted that Albanian politics were troubled by corruption, that the mafia was violent and that sources linked mafia figures with the ruling Socialist Party.
Justice Barrett said the Tribunal’s treatment of that background was unreasonable and potentially irrational. In his view, it was illogical to accept evidence of voter intimidation involving the ruling party’s associates while concluding that intimidation of a member of the main opposition party had no COI support. He also said the Tribunal could not reject uncontradicted evidence on a “gut sense” that more detail was needed.
The court considered section 28(7) of the International Protection Act 2015, which can mean that some statements need no further confirmation if specified conditions are met. Justice Barrett said it was difficult to see that the provision had not been breached. He also found the Tribunal had not adequately explained why the evidence before it was unreliable or why further corroboration was necessary.
The court ordered the impugned decision quashed and the appeals remitted to IPAT for fresh consideration. It did not grant refugee status or subsidiary protection, and it made no final determination of the applicants’ underlying claims. On costs, the judge said the couple appeared entitled to them; any objection was to be raised with the registrar or judicial assistant within 14 days, after which a costs hearing would be scheduled.