The High Court has quashed a Refugee Appeals Tribunal decision rejecting an asylum applicant’s appeal after finding that the tribunal member made a material error about what had been said at an earlier interview.
In a judgment delivered on 15 April 2011, Mr Justice Cooke said the tribunal member wrongly treated the applicant’s account of mentioning her brother as a political activist as referring to her section 11 interview. The account concerned her earlier section 8 interview, when she first applied for refugee status.
The court found that the distinction mattered. The tribunal member had relied on the supposed omission as a “fundamental piece of information” and used it to undermine the applicant’s credibility. The judge said the member’s reasons referred to procedures for reading back and correcting section 11 interview notes, which did not apply to the section 8 interview.
The applicant, a Belarusian national, had arrived in Ireland in June 2004 on a student visa and applied for asylum in May 2006. She said she had been arrested and detained while returning to Belarus from Poland with 2,000 leaflets for an opposition political party in which her brother was active. She also said she was strip-searched and that an envelope posted from Belarus had arrived empty. These were claims considered in the tribunal proceedings, not findings by the High Court that the events had occurred.
The tribunal had affirmed a negative recommendation on the asylum claim, principally because it found the applicant not credible. It also made an alternative finding that her connection to her brother’s political activity was too remote. The High Court said it was unclear which aspect of her claim the remoteness finding addressed and considered it preferable to leave the matter for reconsideration.
The court upheld the first of the two grounds for which leave had been granted: that the tribunal decision was based on a material error of fact. It did not decide the separate ground concerning country-of-origin information. Certiorari will issue quashing the tribunal’s decision, and the appeal is to be reconsidered by a different tribunal member.