The High Court has quashed a decision refusing subsidiary protection to a mother and daughter from Croatia after finding that the Minister’s analysis did not appear to consider a later account of an armed break-in at their home.
In a judgment delivered on 4 December 2009, Mr Justice Cooke said the account could be significant when assessed alongside the other events the applicants described. He stressed that the court was not deciding that the incident amounted to “previous serious harm” or that the applicants were eligible for protection. Those questions must first be assessed by the protection decision-maker.
The applicants, identified in the judgment as M. S. T. and her daughter J. T., had sought judicial review of the Minister’s 15 September 2008 refusal of their subsidiary protection application. They said they had faced violence, threats and intimidation in Croatia because they were ethnic Serbs. Their claims included attacks on their home and the daughter’s bullying and assault at school. The Minister’s analysis concluded that the events described in the original application did not amount to serious harm and that return would not expose them to renewed or further serious harm.
A January 2008 psychiatric report by Ray Clarke recorded the mother’s account of a separate incident: three masked men, one carrying a gun, broke into the home at night, threatened her and demanded money. The report described damage to furniture and ethnic abuse, and said the daughter was terrified. The court noted that this detail had not appeared in the earlier account and that the Minister’s analysis did not specifically mention the report, despite a covering letter drawing attention to it.
The judgment said the incident could be viewed as a one-off burglary, or, alongside the earlier events, as part of a pattern of serious harassment. The Minister should have considered that additional information. The court said a reconsideration could reach a different conclusion, while eligibility would still depend on a forward-looking assessment of risk and would need to take account of changes since September 2008, including the applicants’ medical treatment and conditions for ethnic Serbs in Croatia.
The court rejected the applicants’ other grounds, including challenges to the assessment of country conditions and claims that the Minister had considered irrelevant matters or misunderstood the application. It granted certiorari quashing the refusal on two amended grounds concerning the unconsidered information. The judgment does not itself grant subsidiary protection or determine the applicants’ eligibility.