EDAL case summaries

A Gambian asylum seeker’s account of approximately eight years’ imprisonment and torture there was not considered credible. The Immigration Service and the Helsinki Supreme Administrative Courtconsidered the application to be manifestly unfounded and  the Supreme Administrative Court did not give leave to appeal on the matter. The UN Committee against Torture had, however, requested that the Applicant   not be returned to his home country, The Gambia, until UNCAT had examined the complaint. 

This case concerned the assessment and reason given that the Applicant had not been subjected to “serious harm” in the past, in circumstances where the decision was unclear as to whether the finding was to the effect that his account was not believed, or whether, if believed, the harm was not inflicted by persons who were "actors of serious harm". The Court also considered the definition of “actors of serious harm.” Thirdly, the Court considered whether the decision-maker ignored the specific claim made in the application that returned asylum seekers face a risk of detention,...

In an application for judicial review, the High Court found that the Minister had not erred in relying on the Refugee Appeals Tribunal (RAT) finding as to credibility in a case where the Applicant’s claimed conversion from Islam to Christianity was found to have been in bad faith and solely in order to ground his applications for international protection. As the ‘conversion’ was not genuine, the Court held that there was no reason to believe it would come to the notice of the Afghani authorities should the Applicant be returned. This rendered it unnecessary to subsequently consider...