FT (Ivory Coast) v The Secretary of State for the Home Department

This is a renewed application for permission to appeal against a decision of the Upper Tribunal refusing FT’s appeal against a refusal of asylum. There is nobody here to present the renewed application today, which was refused on the papers by Underhill LJ as long ago as 11 July 2014.

The Upper Tribunal set aside the decision of the First Tier Tribunal (to which the Secretary of State for the Home Department) consented and remade the decision. FT’s claim was based on an allegation that he had been politically active in the Ivory Coast and that on account of his political views and activities, he was at risk were he to be returned to his home country. His appeal failed essentially because the Upper Tribunal, in the person of Deputy Upper Tribunal Judge Bruce, took the view that the documents on which he relied, which were said to be newspaper articles retrieved from the internet, were so unreliable as to cast doubt on their authenticity. For example, one article purportedly dated 20 April 2011 said that the appellant’s father had worked in the 2012 election campaign. That would have been impossible to know in April 2011 and, in any event, according to the appellant, his father had been dead since April 2011. Other articles were also scrutinised by the Upper Tribunal Judge and also proved to be of very doubtful reliability. Accordingly, the Upper Tribunal placed no weight on those documents.

So far as the appellant himself was concerned, he knew almost nothing about the political party for whom he claimed to have been campaigning, and in paragraph 19 of the decision, the Upper Tribunal said that he had given wildly contradictory evidence about his own history and had been unable to provide basic information that he might have been expected to know if he were from a family which supported that particular political group. There was some medical evidence that he was suffering from trauma and the Upper Tribunal Judge accepted that that could cloud his memory, but not to the extent that the appellant was deficient in providing information about the political group. Accordingly, the appeal was dismissed.

The dismissal of the appeal turned entirely on the Upper Tribunal Judge’s evaluation of the evidence, and although a lengthy document has been provided in support of the appeal, it has identified no error of law in the Upper Tribunal’s decision let alone an important question of principle or practice. There is no other compelling reason for this court to hear a second appeal, and consequently, I refuse permission to appeal.