The High Court has granted an anonymised Pakistani applicant leave to challenge decisions refusing him subsidiary protection and ordering his deportation, finding substantial grounds to argue that the Minister’s assessment of state protection was irrational in light of country information before him.
The decision, [2012] IEHC 572, was delivered by Ms Justice M. Clark on 28 June 2012. It was a leave application for judicial review, not a final determination of the challenges. An injunction restraining deportation remained in place pending the proceedings.
The applicant, an Ahmadi, said he faced harassment and attacks in Pakistan because of his faith. The asylum authorities rejected his claim, but did not specifically reject that he was Ahmadi. Their decisions were not challenged. The applicant later sought to quash the Minister’s refusals of subsidiary protection and leave to remain, as well as the deportation order.
The court focused on country information considered in the Minister’s decisions. It said the reports described restrictions on Ahmadi religious practice, discriminatory laws, violence and instances in which police were complicit in harassment or failed to act against anti-Ahmadi attacks. While the Minister’s decision-makers had concluded that Pakistan had a functioning police force and judicial system, the judge said the same material supported an argument that effective state protection was unavailable to Ahmadis facing such risks. The court also rejected, at this stage, the submission that an Ahmadi could avoid persecution by practising the faith only in private.
Leave was granted on the ground that the subsidiary protection and deportation decisions, insofar as they relied on the country reports, were “irrational and unreasonable”. The court did not decide that the applicant was entitled to protection or that either decision would ultimately be quashed.
The court refused leave on the other grounds addressed. It rejected the challenge to the Minister’s refusal of refugee status, noting that the applicant had chosen not to challenge the Tribunal’s negative decision before seeking subsidiary protection and had not shown exceptional circumstances to justify revisiting it. It also refused leave on the argument that the deportation order had to be personally signed by the Minister, following earlier High Court decisions. A separate argument that the Minister personally had to decide the refoulement issue was left to await a Supreme Court decision in another case. The claim that an indefinite deportation order was disproportionate was rejected on the facts presented.