Sajfudinov v Secretary of State for the Home Department

In an asylum appeal, the tribunal must evaluate all material evidence and give the weight it considers appropriate. The ultimate assessment of whether a fear of persecution is well founded is evaluative. An appellate court will not substitute its own assessment unless the tribunal has erred in law, failed to address a material issue, or reached a legally impermissible conclusion. Different tribunal determinations concerning people from the same country or ethnic group do not themselves establish an error of law. Each case must be decided on its own evidence and facts. A tribunal may accept that evidence of a general risk exists while finding that the individual claimant does not face a reasonable likelihood of persecution.

The appellant, a Croatian Serb from Eastern Slavonia, claimed asylum after alleged threats and harassment following his former service in the Serbian Forces and membership of the Serb Democratic Party. The special adjudicator rejected his appeal. The Immigration Appeal Tribunal upheld that decision on 13 October 2000, finding that he did not have a well-founded fear of persecution if returned to Croatia.

On appeal, the appellant argued that the tribunal had failed to assess properly his military service, evidence about local implementation of political reforms, alleged hidden lists of war-crime suspects, and inconsistent tribunal decisions. The central issue was whether the tribunal had committed an error of law warranting remittal.

1. Appeal dismissed. The tribunal had lawfully evaluated the evidence and its conclusion was not susceptible to appellate review merely because another conclusion might have been reached.
2. The applicable asylum standard was whether there was a reasonable likelihood that the appellant would be persecuted for a Convention reason on return, as stated in R v Secretary of State for the Home Department, ex parte Sivakumaran [1998] AC 958.
3. The tribunal had addressed the submission that reforms in Croatia had not sufficiently reached local authorities. It had considered the evidence of a gap between central government policy and local reality, accepted the need for caution, but concluded that the evidence did not establish that Croatian Serbs generally could not safely return.
4. The tribunal had also addressed the narrower individual risk arising from the appellant’s former military service. It was entitled to find that there was no hard evidence of hidden lists and that, even if such lists existed, the appellant’s limited role in guarding his village made it unlikely that he would appear on one.
5. The principles stated in Karanakaran v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2000] INLR 122 required evaluation of the totality of the evidence, but did not permit the appellate court to re-evaluate the tribunal’s conclusion. Inconsistency between tribunal decisions was undesirable, but could not itself constitute a ground of appeal.

Order: appeal dismissed, with detailed public-funded costs assessment for the appellant.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): dismissed the appeal from the Immigration Appeal Tribunal’s determination of 13 October 2000.