The High Court has refused an anonymised Nigerian applicant leave to seek judicial review of a decision rejecting his appeal for refugee status. The court found that he had not shown substantial grounds to quash the Refugee Appeals Tribunal decision, though it extended time for his application, which had been filed two days late.
The applicant had sought asylum in Ireland in March 2006, saying he feared religious persecution. He told officials that Muslims had attacked and burned his church in Maiduguri during riots in February 2006, and that he feared both Muslims and relatives of Christians killed in the violence. The judgment records that the existence of the riots and church burnings was not disputed.
The Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner recommended against granting refugee status. It raised credibility concerns, including the applicant’s difficulty naming landmarks in Maiduguri, discrepancies in the address shown on church documents, and his account of why people seeking him could find him in Lagos. The Refugee Appeals Tribunal dismissed his appeal in September 2007.
At the appeal hearing, the applicant gave further evidence about longstanding conflict with his father over his conversion from Islam to Christianity. As recounted in the tribunal decision, he said his father had threatened him, his first wife had been killed, and his church in Ibadan had been burned. The High Court noted that these matters had not been included in his original account or questionnaire and that the alleged killing of his first wife had not been raised at the earlier interview.
The applicant argued that the tribunal’s credibility assessment relied on speculation and that it failed to address his appeal submissions and supporting material. The respondent accepted that the tribunal’s wording was not forensic, but argued that its decision adequately explained why the evidence was not accepted.
Justice M. H. Clark held that the tribunal had identified the parts of the applicant’s account it found difficult to accept and set them out in context. The court considered the credibility findings rationally supported by the evidence, including the evolving account of events and the applicant’s explanations about leaving his wife and children and travelling to Ireland. It also found that the tribunal did not need to discuss country information about riots that were not disputed or police conduct that was not relevant to the claim as made.
The judge was troubled that the tribunal had not referred to three earlier tribunal decisions submitted for the applicant. However, she found no prejudice: the applicants’ credibility had been accepted in those cases, so their relevance here was not established. The court therefore refused leave. This was a decision on whether the applicant could bring judicial review; it did not quash the tribunal’s decision.