The High Court has quashed a Refugee Appeals Tribunal decision refusing a Nigerian man refugee status, finding that three credibility findings lacked adequate reasons. It remitted his appeal to the Tribunal for determination by a different member.
The judgment, delivered by Mr Justice Barr on 25 November 2014, concerned a judicial review of the Tribunal’s decision of 7 December 2008. The applicant had challenged findings that his account was not credible, arguing that they were irrational and unsupported by reasons.
The judgment recounts the applicant’s claim that he had been involved with the Niger Delta Vigilantes and later the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta. He said he passed information about MEND to Shell while working there, after which MEND members kidnapped him in November 2007 and left him in a hole. He said a friend helped him escape. These were the applicant’s claims, not findings made by the High Court.
The Tribunal had rejected, among other matters, his account that a friend provided a rope to help him escape; his account of travelling through Zimbabwe and South Africa before reaching Ireland; and his reasons for not seeking asylum in South Africa. The High Court held that the Tribunal had given no adequate explanation for rejecting the first two accounts and had not engaged with the reasons he gave for not seeking asylum in South Africa, including his account that violence against foreigners had prompted him to leave.
Justice Barr said the three findings were part of a wider assessment of credibility and that their weight in the overall decision could not be determined. Because their cumulative effect might have affected that assessment, the entire Tribunal decision had to be quashed.
The court granted certiorari quashing the Tribunal’s 2008 decision and directed that the applicant’s appeal against the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner’s decision be returned to the Tribunal for a different member to decide. The judgment did not determine the refugee appeal itself.