The High Court dismissed a judicial review challenge by Olga Kikumbi and Ilunga Kikumbi to decisions refusing their asylum claims, finding that errors alleged in the assessment of their accounts did not invalidate the decisions.
In a judgment delivered on 7 February 2007, Mr Justice Herbert considered whether the authorised officer had assessed country information and the applicants’ credibility lawfully and given adequate reasons. The applicants argued that the officer had wrongly treated Fataki as the main town of Ituri District, misread information about conflict and militia control, and rejected their account of an attack without adequate reasons.
The officer had questioned the applicants’ account that their family moved from Bunia to Fataki in April 2003. The judge agreed that she had misread an IRIN report: its wording clearly identified Bunia, not Fataki, as the district’s main town. But the officer had also relied on a separate reason for doubting the move: information indicating that Fataki was under the control of the UPC, whose members were mainly Hema, while the applicants’ family was Lendu. The judge held that the town-name error was not material to that separate assessment and did not invalidate it.
The applicants also challenged the officer’s conclusions about events they said took place at their home in Fataki on 18 July 2003. They said armed Hema came to the house, threatened their family, and that the two applicants escaped through a window and went to a friend’s home. The officer had questioned how they escaped and why the friend’s Lendu family was not attacked. The judge found that the officer’s report set out the reasons for those credibility conclusions in sufficient detail and that it was reasonably open to her to reach them.
The applicants further argued that the officer had misunderstood country information indicating Lendu attacks in Fataki in July and August 2003. The judge concluded that the information before the officer supported her concern about the applicants’ account, including whether their family was targeted while Lendu neighbours were not. He found it was not unreasonable or irrational for her to conclude that the account did not seem plausible.
The court’s decision was to dismiss the judicial review application. The judgment did not grant the applicants asylum or revisit the asylum claims as a fresh merits determination; it addressed whether the challenged decisions should be quashed.