The High Court dismissed a Venezuelan applicant’s judicial review challenge to the refusal of subsidiary protection, finding no demonstrated error in the appeal tribunal’s decision. Mr Justice Richard Humphreys delivered judgment on 5 June 2018.
The applicant had first sought asylum, saying he attended two university marches in 2008 but denying membership of a political party. After that claim was refused, he sought subsidiary protection on the basis of claimed risk from political activism. Documents submitted in September 2015 included, for the first time, a political party registration form and a letter from a party official. The applicant later accepted that much of the letter’s content was fraudulent. He also produced an identity card that he subsequently described as a party membership card, though the judgment says it was not one.
The Refugee Appeals Tribunal dismissed his appeal on 30 December 2016. The applicant challenged that decision on seven grounds, including the tribunal’s treatment of alleged indiscriminate violence in Venezuela, the interpretation of UNHCR guidelines, risk on return and the political party documents.
The judge said the tribunal applied the correct legal test for whether violence arose in the context of an internal armed conflict, and no error in applying that test to the facts had been shown. He stressed that the tribunal’s statement that indiscriminate violence was “arguable” was not a finding that such violence existed. He also noted that the applicant had been found not to face risk on the facts, regardless of the armed-conflict argument.
On the party documents, the judge said the tribunal had found the registration certificate unreliable for reasons connected to the earlier letter. He considered that the tribunal could reasonably reject a further document from the same party after finding the earlier document fraudulent. He added that the applicant had not established what evidence had been before the tribunal about who signed the certificate. Even if there had been an error, he said, it would not have been material: at most, the evidence showed an application for ordinary party membership, and the applicant had not provided country information about threats to inactive or former members.
The judge also said the respondents’ motion to dismiss would have succeeded because of what he described as significant non-disclosure, including changing accounts and failures to explain submitted documents. The formal order was that the application was dismissed. The judgment did not grant the requested judicial review relief.