The High Court has quashed a Refugee Appeals Tribunal decision rejecting an Afghan minor’s account in an asylum appeal, finding that the tribunal made a material error about asylum systems in Iran and Turkey.
Mr Justice Barr ruled on 25 July 2014 that the error contributed directly to the tribunal’s rejection of the applicant’s credibility. The court quashed the tribunal’s decision of 26 April 2011 and directed that the matter be reconsidered by a different tribunal member. It did not decide the applicant’s asylum claim.
The applicant, identified in the judgment as A.M.K., said he feared harm in Afghanistan because of his father and brother’s past involvement with the Taliban and their subsequent disappearance. He said he was threatened and assaulted, and that his uncle and mother paid $12,000 for his journey to Ireland. Those details were recounted as the applicant’s claims in the judgment, not findings made by the High Court.
The tribunal had found his account not credible, including because he had not sought asylum in Iran or Turkey while travelling to Ireland. It said the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees operated asylum systems in both countries and considered his explanation unreasonable.
On appeal, the applicant submitted country information describing significant limits on protection in Iran and Turkey, including the absence of an apparent national refugee status determination system in Iran and Turkey’s geographic restriction of its refugee procedure to Europeans. The judge was satisfied that the tribunal either failed to consider the information or erred in concluding that the UN refugee agency operated asylum systems in both countries.
The applicant’s case was that a refugee was not required to seek asylum in the first safe country. The respondents accepted that proposition of law, according to the judgment. The court’s decision addressed the tribunal’s assessment of the explanation for not applying in Iran or Turkey and the resulting credibility finding.
Because the erroneous finding was one of several reasons for rejecting credibility, the judge said the court could not know what weight the tribunal had given it. The finding could not be separated from the rest of the credibility assessment, so the entire tribunal decision had to be set aside.