The High Court has dismissed an Algerian man’s challenge to decisions on his international protection application, ruling that he should pursue his appeal to the International Protection Appeals Tribunal (IPAT).
In a judgment delivered on 7 July 2023, Mr Justice Mark Heslin said the applicant had not shown that his case fell within the rare exceptions allowing judicial review of a first-instance protection decision while a statutory appeal remained available. His appeal to IPAT had not been heard when the judicial review was considered.
The applicant sought to quash the International Protection Office’s (IPO) September 2022 recommendation on refugee and subsidiary protection status and an October 2022 decision under section 49 of the International Protection Act 2015. He also sought a stay on the IPAT appeal. The judge said the alleged errors did not deprive the IPO of jurisdiction and had not been shown to involve an injustice that could not be remedied on appeal.
The applicant’s account, as summarised in the judgment, included a longstanding dispute with his uncles over his late father’s home and inheritance. He said one uncle, identified in the judgment as ZM, abducted him in 2014 and later targeted him because he believed the applicant had reported him to police over drugs. The IPO accepted those matters as material facts. It also accepted that the applicant was attacked while sleeping in a bakery in 2020, but found no substantive reason to believe that ZM was behind that attack.
The applicant argued that the IPO’s findings of a reasonable chance of persecution and a real risk of serious harm were inconsistent with its separate finding that state protection would be available in Algeria. He also challenged the assessment of his evidence, the treatment of past harm under section 28(6), and an incorrect arrival year appearing in parts of the section 49 report.
Justice Heslin rejected those grounds. He held that fear of persecution or risk of harm and state protection are distinct, though linked, elements of the protection assessment, and that the IPO had considered them in a logical sequence. He found the applicant had not established that the IPO failed to engage with the past-harm provision or the state-protection question. The incorrect arrival year—2021 instead of 2020—was not shown to be material, the judge said, because the correct date appeared elsewhere in the report and the applicant’s circumstances were considered.
The court dismissed the application, concluding that the applicant had established no entitlement to judicial review even if the case could be heard before the IPAT appeal. The parties were directed to discuss the form of order and costs. The judge’s preliminary view was that the respondents were entitled to costs; that issue was left for agreement or further submissions.