The High Court granted two applicants leave to challenge four aspects of a 2010 Refugee Appeals Tribunal decision refusing their asylum claims, but did not quash that decision or determine whether they qualify for refugee status.
In a judgment delivered on 14 May 2015, Mr Justice Barr extended the time for bringing the judicial review application to 18 May 2010. The State did not oppose the extension. The applicants, an uncle and nephew from Pakistan, had said legal advice and authorisation to proceed were delayed.
The applicants told the Tribunal they feared persecution linked to their involvement with the Muslim League N Group in Pakistan. They alleged they had been threatened, abducted and tortured, and that the nephew’s father remained missing. The Tribunal rejected their claims in a joint decision dated 25 February 2010. It found their accounts lacked credibility and also concluded they could relocate within Pakistan and had not shown state protection was unavailable.
Justice Barr considered the threshold for leave, which requires substantial grounds for contending that a decision is invalid or should be quashed. He granted leave to argue that the Tribunal had not properly assessed the applicants’ SPIRASI medical reports, including whether injuries described as “typical of” or “consistent with” their accounts could support those accounts.
Leave was also granted to challenge the Tribunal’s treatment of internal relocation. The judge said the Tribunal had not addressed specific submissions about alleged government involvement, threatening calls and letters, or reported harassment of the uncle’s family after he left Pakistan. The court also allowed a challenge to the state-protection assessment, noting that the Tribunal had mentioned but not dealt with a letter to police and evidence of attempts to obtain protection.
The fourth permitted ground concerns identity documents. The judge found substantial grounds to argue that the Tribunal had not sufficiently considered the documents submitted or given cogent reasons for rejecting them.
The court refused leave on the applicants’ other argued grounds, including their challenge to the Tribunal’s assessment of whether they were from Lahore. It also rejected the State’s preliminary contention that the case was moot because the party named in the asylum claims had since entered government. Justice Barr considered that political conditions could change and said assessment of the country information and whether the claimed risk remained was for the Tribunal.
The ruling allows the applicants to pursue the four specified judicial-review grounds. It is not a final ruling on those challenges or on the asylum claims.