The High Court has quashed a decision refusing an Afghan applicant refugee status, finding that the Refugee Appeals Tribunal made a material factual error about supporting documents and gave unclear reasons for rejecting the appeal.
In a judgment delivered on 27 February 2014, Mr Justice Barr also found that the Tribunal had not adequately addressed country information relevant to the applicant’s claim that he faced persecution from Afghan government forces. The appeal was remitted to the Tribunal for further adjudication by a different member.
The applicant, identified in the judgment as T. J., said he was taken by the Taliban to Pakistan in December 2007 for training intended to prepare him for a suicide attack. He said he became ill, returned to Afghanistan and fled after one night because he feared both the Taliban and the government. Those were his claims, not findings by the High Court that the events occurred.
After his initial asylum application was refused, the applicant submitted three documents in support of a further application: a driving licence and documents said to have been issued by the Afghan government and the Taliban in January 2008. The Tribunal’s 21 June 2011 decision described documents as having been issued in 2009 and 2010 and gave them little weight. Mr Justice Barr said that was a manifest error: the two disputed documents were dated January 2008, close to the time of the alleged training. The court said the Tribunal should have explained why it discounted evidence that was potentially material to the claim.
The court also found an error in the Tribunal’s reasoning that the Taliban had allowed the applicant to return home and did not trouble him again. That reasoning appeared to assume he had spent an appreciable period in Afghanistan before leaving. The account the Tribunal appeared to accept was that he spent only one night there.
Mr Justice Barr accepted that the Tribunal’s decision was unclear about whether it accepted the applicant’s account but considered his fears objectively unfounded, or instead found him not credible. The court said this lack of clarity made it difficult to identify why the appeal had failed.
The Tribunal had also considered relocation to Kabul, relying in part on the possibility of family support. The High Court found that it had not sufficiently considered current country information about risks to civilians suspected of supporting armed anti-government groups, alongside the January 2008 Afghan government document. It did not decide the applicant’s refugee claim; it set aside the Tribunal decision and ordered a fresh adjudication.
The court extended the time for bringing the judicial review application to 16 August 2011, the date the notice of motion was filed. It found the short delay caused no prejudice to the respondents.