The High Court dismissed an Albanian man’s judicial review challenge to a Refugee Appeals Tribunal decision rejecting his asylum appeal. Mr Justice Richard Humphreys ruled on 31 October 2017 that the applicant had not shown the tribunal’s decision was invalid in law. The order dismissed the proceedings; the judgment did not grant asylum or make a fresh decision on the asylum claim.
The applicant said he began a relationship with a woman in Albania in April 2012. He claimed that when he tried to end it, her brothers threatened him and later found and beat him in Greece. He said he fled to Ireland in July 2013 and that the brothers murdered his father the following month. These were the applicant’s claims, not findings by the High Court.
He applied for asylum in April 2014 after being caught driving without a licence. The Refugee Applications Commissioner rejected his claim in September 2014, and the tribunal rejected his appeal on 5 May 2016. Leave to bring judicial review proceedings was granted in November 2016. Although the application was out of time, the respondents did not press an objection on that basis.
At the hearing, the applicant argued that he was persecuted because he belonged to a social group defined by people who transgressed courtship norms in Albania. The judge said that point had not been pleaded and could not properly be raised, but considered it in case that view was wrong. He found that the evidence did not establish such a social group or show that the alleged persecution was connected to membership of one. The tribunal was entitled to treat the matter as a private dispute involving the applicant and the particular woman.
The applicant also argued that he was at risk because he belonged to a family. The judge said the alleged threat was made against the applicant as an individual and that the claimed targeting of his father did not establish that the applicant himself was persecuted because of family membership. The court held that family membership was not the relevant Convention link in his case.
The applicant separately challenged the tribunal’s description of his belief that his former girlfriend’s brothers were responsible for his father’s death as assumption or speculation. The judge said the tribunal had recorded his position as one of suspicion, and the account he gave in interview was that the dispute was the only problem he had in Albania, which was why he thought one of the brothers was responsible. The judge concluded that describing this as suspicion or speculation was not an error of fact warranting the decision being quashed.