The High Court has dismissed M.S.’s judicial review challenge to the rejection of his international protection appeal, finding that he had not established unlawfulness in the tribunal’s assessment of his claim.
In a judgment delivered on 12 November 2019, Mr Justice Richard Humphreys said the International Protection Appeals Tribunal acknowledged that M.S.’s father had been attacked in a 2016 land dispute and considered the question of future risk, giving reasons for its assessment. The complaint that the tribunal had failed to make a reasoned assessment therefore failed.
M.S., who was born in Bangladesh in 1989, claimed he had faced persecution there in 2012. The tribunal did not accept that account. He later lived in the UK on a study visa from October 2013 to July 2017, with the final two months unlawful, and returned to Bangladesh in 2016. The tribunal accepted that his father was attacked that year but rejected M.S.’s claim that he had also been threatened.
He arrived in Ireland on 4 July 2017 and applied for international protection. The International Protection Office rejected the application and refused permission to remain on 2 January 2019. The tribunal rejected his appeal on 14 May 2019. He began judicial review proceedings on 6 June 2019, primarily seeking to quash the tribunal’s decision. The court granted leave to bring the case, and the respondents filed a statement of opposition.
The court said that an absence of narrative discussion about the 2016 attack in the tribunal’s future-risk assessment did not establish that the issue had not been considered. Justice Humphreys also explained that the assessment starts from the facts about past persecution or serious harm that the tribunal actually accepted, rather than facts that might merely be possible.
M.S. also argued that it was irrational for the tribunal to conclude that any enmity directed personally at his father would have ceased when his father died on 27 August 2018. The judge said irrationality sets a high threshold and that the argument did not meet it. He noted that assessing future risk involves uncertainty, but that uncertainty alone does not make a tribunal’s conclusion irrational or unlawful speculation.
The court dismissed the application. It did not quash the tribunal’s decision.