THE HIGH Court has overturned a decision refusing refugee status to an Afghan teenage boy who had claimed the Taliban was seeking to use him as a suicide bomber or a child soldier.
Mr Justice John Edwards quashed the Refugee Appeals Tribunal’s decision refusing refugee status after finding that the boy was not afforded a fair hearing by the tribunal in that it had not engaged with his expressed worry that he was at risk of being “press-ganged as a child soldier or that he might even be forced to undertake a suicide bombing”.
The boy came here in 2006 when he was 13 and applied for refugee status based on fears that he would be persecuted by the Taliban and the Afghan government.
The Refugee Applications Commissioner refused his application on grounds that he failed to establish a well-founded fear of persecution. His appeal to the appeals tribunal was rejected after it ruled the claims were neither credible nor well-founded.
The boy challenged the decision of appeals tribunal member Michelle O’Gorman in judicial review proceedings on grounds including that she gave insufficient weight to the boy’s young age when assessing his claim.
He had alleged that after he refused to join the Taliban on its request in 2004, that it told him it would take him by force.
He said the Afghan government found out about the Taliban’s efforts to get him to join and warned him that if he had contact with the Taliban, he would be killed or put in jail.
He then left the country.
Mr Justice Edwards yesterday said the appeal tribunal member’s findings concerning the boy’s claims about the Taliban were “largely based on speculation and conjecture” and no country-of-origin information had been called in to support her decision.
In the absence of outside evidence showing the boy’s fear about the Taliban was not well founded when considered objectively, the tribunal member should not “have speculated or engaged” as she had, he ruled.
The appeal tribunal member should have considered the boy’s subjective credibility and given him the benefit of the doubt given his age and immaturity, the judge said. In all the circumstances, her decision related to the Taliban claims was flawed and should be quashed.
However, the judge agreed with the appeal tribunal member’s finding that the boy’s fears of being persecuted by the Afghan government had not been made out.