SA (Sri Lanka) v Secretary of State for the Home Department

On an application for permission to appeal from an asylum tribunal, the Court of Appeal intervenes only where the fact-finding arguably contains an error of law or logic. It does not substitute its own view of credibility for a tenable tribunal assessment.

A tribunal must assess risk factors in context and cumulatively. That obligation does not require aggregation where the tribunal has found no other continuing risk indicator with which a particular feature can combine. A challenge which merely re-argues credibility or factual conclusions provides no arguable basis for appellate intervention.

The appellant, a Sri Lankan Tamil, appealed against an Asylum and Immigration Tribunal decision dismissing her protection claim. The Tribunal accepted that she had probably been detained and ill-treated after involvement in local demonstrations, but doubted the circumstances of her release, rejected her account of a reporting restriction, and found no sufficient continuing risk from the Sri Lankan authorities or the LTTE.

Before the Court of Appeal, the appellant argued that the Tribunal had failed to apply the cumulative risk approach in the country guidance decision LP (LTTE area, Tamils, Colombo, risk) Sri Lanka CG [2007] UKAIT 00076, and that its adverse credibility findings were flawed. The central issue was whether those complaints disclosed an arguable error of law or logic warranting permission to appeal.

1. Application refused. The Court of Appeal refused permission to appeal against the Tribunal’s decision.
2. The Court emphasised that the AIT was the fact-finding tribunal. The Court of Appeal could intervene only if the fact-finding disclosed an arguable error of law or an error of logic. It could not grant a fresh hearing merely because it might have reached a different conclusion on credibility or risk.
3. The Tribunal had not unlawfully separated the risk factors. Its treatment of scarring was read in context. It accepted that the scars corroborated ill-treatment, but found that they were not themselves sufficient to create risk and that there was no other continuing risk of investigation or suspicion with which the scarring could be aggregated. This was a permissible application of the country guidance observations in LP (LTTE area, Tamils, Colombo, risk) Sri Lanka CG [2007] UKAIT 00076, at paragraph 217.
4. The challenges to the appellant’s account of her release and to the finding concerning ongoing suspicion sought to re-argue facts that the Tribunal had addressed in detail. The Tribunal had firm and tenable reasons for its doubts, without relying on an excessive or careless approach to credibility.
5. The decision was carefully reasoned and contained no material omission of fact. Although the evaluations were contested, there was no legal basis for requiring the case to be reconsidered. Order: application refused.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): refused the application for permission to appeal and left the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal’s decision undisturbed.
• Asylum and Immigration Tribunal: dismissed the appellant’s protection appeal in AIT No AA/14271/2006.