Afghan man wins challenge over refusal of refugee status

A young man who claimed he fled his native Afghanistan to avoid being killed by the Taliban after failing to carry out a suicide bomb attack has won a High Court challenge to the refusal of his bid for refugee status here.

Ms Justice Iseult O’Malley ruled the refusal was based on an incorrect application by the Refugee Appeals Tribunal of legal tests concerning assessment of the man’s credibility and directed the matter be reconsidered in accordance with her findings.

She found the tribunal, whose refusal had been upheld by the Minister for Justice, erred in how it concluded that the man’s reasons for not seeking asylum in Greece or Belfast, where he passed through before reaching Dublin in late 2007, were “not reasonable”.

The man had said he did not seek asylum in Greece because the Greek police told him to leave the country and because other Afghanis whom he met in Greece had told him he would be given “no food or anything”.

Problems with the Greek asylum system had been “widely reported” upon and it was not unfair to infer the Irish authorities knew, when the man’s application was being considered, of a “systemic deficiency” in the asylum process in Greece, the judge said.

The tribunal’s decision was also made in August 2009, just weeks after the United Nations High Commission for Refugees announced it would no longer participate in the Greek asylum procedure, she noted.

Deficiencies in a country’s asylum process which give rise to a real risk of violation of the applicant’s rights in a transfer context may constitute reasonable grounds for not making an application in that country, she said.

The man had said he did not seek asylum in Belfast after being told, if he did so, application of the UK system meant he would be sent back to Greece, the judge noted. It was “indisputable” the policy of the UK authorities in 2007 was to return asylum seekers who had come from Greece back to Greece but, while the Government had the same policy in 2007, it was not applied to the man “when the truth emerged”.

While the tribunal made other adverse credibility findings against the man, including there was no evidence his refusal to be a suicide bomber would create difficulties for him if returned to Afghanistan, those were tainted by the initial adverse finding on his credibility over his reasons for not seeking asylum in Greece or the UK, the judge found.

In his action, the man claimed he was sent by his father to an Islamic religious college in Pakistan where he was subject to a mixture of brainwashing, encouragement and threats concerning the desirability of carrying out suicide attacks against both the Afghani government and foreign forces occupying the country.

He and his father were members of the Islamic Party/Taliban in Afghanistan but his father was unaware of the nature of the Pakistani school and always told him not to take part in hurting people, he claimed.

He claimed he was sent to Kabul after eventually agreeing to participate in a suicide bombing attack but, because he did not want to hurt innocent people, he left a house where he was staying and went to an uncle’s home.

Soon after, security officials came to his family home to arrest him and, when he was not there, arrested his father whose whereabouts remain unknown, the man also claimed.

His uncle then made arrangements with an agent for him to leave Afghanistan and he travelled, on a false Hungarian passport, via Iran, Turkey and Greece before ultimately arriving in Belfast from where he travelled to Dublin in late 2007, he claimed.