The High Court has ruled as unsafe a decision by the Refugee Appeals Tribunal (RAT) rejecting an asylum application from a Congolese teacher who claimed he faced political persecution back home.
The teacher, who was active in a school strike in his home country in February 2005, succeeded in judicial review proceedings challenging a RAT decision rejecting as implausible his claims that he faces persecution due to his activism against the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The man, a married father-of-three, claims he had to leave the DRC after he took part in a public demonstration organised by the country's political opposition in the capital Kinshasa on June 30th, 2005. Afterwards, government troops came looking for
him at this home but he was away.
He fled to a province in the Congo where he stayed for ten days and learned in the meantime, his uncle, a teacher with the same name, had been arrested and released after two days when the authorities discovered they had the wrong man.
The applicant said this convinced him he had to leave the DRC and some priests arranged his flight to Ireland and also provided him with a false French passport. He eventually made it to Ireland, via France, in September 2005.
He applied for asylum and was refused by the Refugee Applications Commissioner. That refusal was upheld by the RAT.
In its decision, the RAT said it did not consider it plausible the teacher would be targeted "over and above" other members of his trade union, especially as the strike was settled and senior leaders had been released by the authorities. The RAT also found it implausible the authorities would have arrested his uncle by mistake and the man would have been able to travel on a false passport.
In his High Court action, the man argued the RAT based its decision on factually incorrect information.
Today, Mr Justice Bryan McMahon found the RAT's decision was unsafe because of significant errors of fact.
The teacher's explanations about the mistaken identity arrest of his uncle were "reasonable and plausible" and deserved "proper and more careful consideration," the judge said.
The RAT should have put its reservations about the mistaken identity issue more explicitly to the teacher to give him an opportunity to explain before deciding to reject his appeal, the judge added.