The High Court has refused a Georgian woman’s judicial review challenge to a decision rejecting her asylum claim, finding that the Refugee Appeals Tribunal’s omission of documents about her brother did not make its decision unlawful.
The applicant, identified in the judgment as G.K., said she feared persecution by Georgian state authorities because she supported the Justice Party, an opposition group. She alleged that her home and shop had been broken into repeatedly, that police ignored her complaints and that she would be arrested. She also said her brother and dozens of party members were arrested in Batumi on 3 September 2006, prompting her to leave Georgia two days later.
The judgment records that country of origin information described arrests of Justice Party leaders on 6 September 2006 during an operation linked to an alleged coup. It did not support the applicant’s account of a mass arrest of ordinary party members in Batumi on 3 September, or a nationwide crackdown on low-level activists. The Tribunal accepted that she and members of her family belonged to an opposition party, but found it improbable that she would have been arrested in an operation targeting party leaders.
On judicial review, the applicant argued that the Tribunal failed to consider documents submitted on appeal, including letters concerning her brother’s arrest and detention. The High Court said the omission could be criticised and that the Tribunal should have addressed the documents’ relevance. But the court found that, even if accepted as authentic, they established matters that were not disputed: the applicant’s identity and qualifications, her family’s political leanings and her brother’s presence in detention. They did not connect his arrest to the alleged coup or establish that ordinary party members were being arrested for their political affiliation.
The applicant also challenged the Tribunal’s use of country information and its reliance on findings about other aspects of her account. The court said she had not shown that relevant country information was ignored or misunderstood, and that the Tribunal’s findings on peripheral matters were within its remit. It concluded that the central issue was whether her political affiliation gave her an objectively well-founded fear of persecution; the evidence did not establish that it did.
The court refused the application and did not quash the Tribunal’s decision. It noted that the applicant might be able to make a different case for subsidiary protection or submit new evidence in a Section 17(7) claim, but made no determination on either possibility.