The High Court has granted N.M. leave to seek judicial review of a Refugee Appeals Tribunal decision refusing his application for refugee status, finding that the tribunal had not given cogent reasons for rejecting medical evidence that supported his account of ill-treatment.
Mr Justice Brian McGovern delivered the judgment on 7 May 2008. The court also extended the time for bringing the leave application. The respondents did not oppose that extension, and the judge accepted that delays involving the Refugee Legal Service and Legal Aid Board provided good and sufficient reason.
N.M. sought leave to challenge the tribunal member’s decision of 6 October 2005 and to prevent deportation while his refugee claim was considered. The judgment records that he claimed to be Ethiopian, to have been involved with the Oromo Liberation Front, and to have been arrested and tortured. Those claims were his account, not findings made by the High Court.
The tribunal had rejected his claim on credibility grounds, citing inconsistencies in his account, lack of reliable documents supporting his identity or nationality, and other aspects of his evidence. The High Court said those adverse credibility findings were supported by evidence and, on their own, did not make the decision reviewable. The court also stressed that judicial review is not an appeal in which it could substitute its own view of the facts.
The judge’s concern was the tribunal’s treatment of medical evidence. Reports described anxiety and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder; one report also referred to scars and recorded that N.M. attributed them to physical abuse by Ethiopian authorities. The judge said the reports tended to support N.M.’s account, although they were not conclusive.
The tribunal had referred to the Istanbul Protocol and to terms used in assessing whether medical findings accord with an account of torture. But, the judge said, the reports did not use those terms in relation to whether N.M.’s symptoms were consistent with his alleged torture. He found that where medical evidence significantly supported a claim, the tribunal had to explain cogently why it rejected that evidence. In his view, it had failed to do so.
The court held that N.M. had met the threshold for leave to apply for judicial review. It granted leave for the relief identified in specified paragraphs of his statement of grounds. This was permission to bring the judicial review challenge, not a final ruling quashing the tribunal decision or granting refugee status.