SC (Turkey) v Secretary of State for the Home Department

On a renewed application for permission to appeal in an asylum case, the applicant had to show a real prospect that the tribunal’s decision was perverse. A tribunal may assess credibility by testing the internal consistency of an account. Evidence that the account accords with background material or expert opinion does not displace adverse findings based on the account itself. Although tribunals should preferably address relevant background and expert evidence expressly, an omission is immaterial where it could not affect the reasoning. Overall conclusions may sufficiently address individual complaints without separate findings on each, if the tribunal’s position is clear. Brief or incidental detention does not necessarily establish targeted persecution or a well-founded risk on return.

The appellant, a young Kurdish Alevi man from Turkey, sought permission to appeal after two designated immigration judges rejected important parts of his account and refused to accept that he had been targeted for persecution. The tribunal accepted some past detentions but regarded them as matters of passing interest. It rejected the appellant’s account of the event said to have prompted his departure and found no credible explanation for leaving Turkey at that time. The appellant relied on omissions in the tribunal’s findings and on expert and background material supporting his account and alleged risk on return. The central issue was whether those matters created a real prospect that the tribunal’s decision was perverse.

The renewed application for permission to appeal was refused.

1. Permission threshold. The appellant accepted that he had to establish a real prospect of showing that the decision of the two immigration judges was perverse.
2. Credibility assessment. The tribunal rejected the account of the 2004 incident because of internal inconsistencies concerning the circumstances in which the appellant had been asked to hide leaflets, magazines and newspapers. A fact-finding tribunal is entitled to test the credibility of a person seeking refugee status by the internal consistency of his account.
3. Background and expert evidence. The decisive reasoning did not depend on plausibility or on consistency with background material. It depended on the tribunal’s assessment of the appellant’s own account. The consistency of the alleged targeting with the history of others in a similar position, and the supporting opinion of Ms Sheri Laizer, therefore could not undermine the essential credibility finding. It would have been preferable for the tribunal to refer expressly to its findings on the background material and expert report, but the omission made no difference in this case.
4. Other detention complaints. More specific findings could have been made about alleged identity-card checks, fingerprinting, photographing, the asserted opening of a file, and other brief detentions and harassment. However, the tribunal’s overall conclusions sufficiently covered those complaints. Its acceptance that the appellant had been detained in passing did not amount to a finding that he had been targeted for persecution or faced a well-founded risk on return.
5. The defects identified in the decision did not give rise to a real prospect of success on appeal. Permission was refused.

1. Court of Appeal (Civil Division): On 23 March 2007, the court refused the renewed application for permission to appeal, in [2007] EWCA Civ 318.
2. Asylum & Immigration Tribunal: Two designated immigration judges rejected material parts of the appellant’s account, accepted some detentions as matters of passing interest, and found that the evidence did not establish targeted persecution or a well-founded risk on return. The proceedings were recorded as AIT No. AS/13240/2004.