The High Court has rejected a Rwandan man’s application to quash a Refugee Appeals Tribunal decision that dismissed his appeal against a recommendation that he not be declared a refugee.
In a judgment delivered on 18 June 2009, Mr Justice Cooke said the court’s role on judicial review was limited to deciding whether the negative credibility finding had been reached lawfully. It was not for the court to decide the credibility of the asylum claim itself.
The applicant said he fled Rwanda because he feared persecution for his political opinions. He told the asylum authorities he had worked as a civil servant, written articles under a pseudonym for a small newspaper, and been detained and interrogated after the newspaper’s editor was questioned by military intelligence. He said he escaped from a container with help from a soldier and travelled through Burundi and Kenya before reaching Dublin.
The Refugee Appeals Commissioner recommended that he not be recognised as a refugee, finding his account lacked credibility. The Tribunal rejected his appeal on the same basis, describing his account as contrived. The applicant sought certiorari to quash that decision, arguing that it relied on factual errors, breached fair procedures and was unreasonable.
The court considered six alleged errors in the Tribunal’s assessment. These included its account of how the applicant escaped from the container, a reference to a visit to Uganda to attend a trial, and its comparison of his treatment with that of the newspaper’s editor. The judge found no material error in the container account and said any misunderstanding about the trial’s location did not affect the Tribunal’s central concern: why the applicant would have been treated more harshly than the editor.
The judge also found that the Tribunal could reasonably question the applicant’s account of his Uganda visits and his claimed work on an information technology company, which he had not corroborated with concrete details or third-party evidence. The absence of a passport was also relevant: the hearing note showed that the issue had been raised, even if it did not record whether the precise wording in the Tribunal decision had been put to him.
The court said the Tribunal was entitled to consider that the applicant had not sought asylum in Burundi or Kenya. The judgment noted that he had no legal obligation to claim asylum in either country, but said the matter could still be relevant to credibility.
Concluding that the challenge was unfounded and that the credibility assessment remained cogent when considered as a whole, the court rejected the application. It did not determine the asylum claim afresh.