AKB & Anor v Secretary of State for Home Department

An appeal on a point of law cannot merely seek to show that a tribunal should have reached different factual conclusions. A tribunal may accept evidence concerning one period and reject evidence concerning another, provided it gives cogent and rational reasons. General evidence of police misconduct or ill-treatment does not establish an asylum or human-rights claim without evidence of an individual and distinctive risk, such as targeted treatment of the claimant. The Court of Appeal therefore refused permission where the challenge was only a disagreement with the tribunal’s factual assessment.

The applicants, an Albanian husband and wife, claimed asylum and relied on human-rights grounds based principally on the husband’s former links with Albania’s Democratic Party and SHIK. An adjudicator dismissed their appeals in a determination promulgated on 10 January 2003. Following remittal and reconsideration, the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal dismissed the appeals again on 3 June 2005.

The applicants sought permission to appeal, arguing that the tribunal had irrationally accepted their account up to 1997 but rejected their account thereafter, and had failed properly to assess country evidence concerning police misconduct and ill-treatment. The central issue was whether those complaints disclosed an error of law rather than an impermissible challenge to factual findings.

Dyson LJ delivered the judgment, with Waller LJ agreeing. The application for permission to appeal was refused.

1. Credibility assessment. It was not perverse for the tribunal to accept the applicants’ evidence as true for one period but reject it for a later period. The tribunal gave cogent and rational reasons for rejecting the account that the husband remained of interest to the Communist authorities between 1998 and 2002. Those reasons included the objective evidence about conditions in Albania and the fact that, if the authorities had genuinely been interested in him, they would have had little difficulty locating him.
2. Objective evidence. The reports relied upon described general problems of police ill-treatment, judicial corruption and related abuses. They did not indicate that these applicants were peculiarly at risk. Such general evidence could not sustain an asylum or human-rights claim without evidence that police misconduct of the relevant seriousness was targeted at persons such as Democratic Party sympathisers.
3. Scope of appellate review. The grounds advanced did not disclose an error of law by the tribunal. They were, in substance, attempts to establish that the tribunal’s factual findings should not have been made. That was insufficient for an appeal limited to a point of law.

The formal order was: application refused.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): On 15 November 2005, the application for permission to appeal from the Tribunal’s reconsideration decision was refused.
• Asylum and Immigration Tribunal: On 3 June 2005, following remittal and reconsideration, the applicants’ appeals on asylum and human-rights grounds were dismissed.
• Adjudicator: The earlier appeals were dismissed in a determination promulgated on 10 January 2003.