The High Court has refused an application to quash a Refugee Appeals Tribunal decision rejecting M. N.’s appeal against a recommendation that his asylum claim be refused.
M. N., who is from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, said he feared persecution because of his political activity as a member of the Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS). He claimed he had been arrested and threatened in 2005, later arrested and beaten, and escaped from prison before fleeing to Ireland. These were his account of events, not findings by the court.
The Tribunal rejected the appeal on credibility grounds. Its concerns included the claimed release after M. N. denied UDPS membership, his account of escaping prison, and the lack of documentation of his party membership. The Tribunal also relied on information attributed to a lecture by Mohammed Dayri, a UNHCR protection officer, that UDPS members were no longer being targeted after the party leader’s return in 2003.
M. N. sought judicial review, arguing that the Tribunal had relied on outdated information while overlooking other country material, and had failed to provide the lecture or a written indication of the information’s nature and source under section 16(8) of the Refugee Act 1996.
Justice Cooke rejected the claim that the Tribunal had made an error of fact. He found that it had considered the country information in the appeal materials, and that information from a Swiss source also supported the view that the UDPS’s position had changed after 2003. The material about continuing incidents did not, in the Tribunal’s assessment, show systematic targeting of UDPS members.
On disclosure, the judge said it was unclear whether the information came from a written lecture text or from an oral exchange. If it came from a document, the Tribunal should have furnished it; if it came from oral remarks, it should have provided a written indication of the information’s nature and source. The court considered there may have been a technical failure to comply with section 16(8), even without a request from the applicant.
However, the judge held that any failure did not require the decision to be quashed. The information had been put to M. N. at the hearing, giving him an opportunity to dispute it or seek to examine its source. It was also supported by other country information, and the Tribunal’s broader credibility concerns did not depend solely on it. The application for judicial review was refused.