Angolan man whose parents were murdered in home has refugee-status refusal reconsidered
High Court Reporter
An Angolan man who claims his parents were murdered by government forces will have his asylum refusal reconsidered following a successful judicial review at the High Court.
The man, who cannot be identified, was refused asylum status here, on appeal, in June 2024.
He submitted that he was a member of the FLEC in Angola - a regional separatist group called the Front for the Liberation of Cabinda, fighting for independence from Angola.
He claims he distributed leaflets and party materials for a number of years for the group, as did his father.
The man submits that, on a redacted date, a violent incident occurred at his family home where his parents were killed, allegedly by soldiers from the Angolan ruling party, the MPLA.
He submitted that three men went to the back of the home with fuel and set fire to the house while soldiers entered the home, taking the man's mother and wife to another room to beat and rape them.
The man and his father were tied elsewhere in the home but his father managed to break into the room where he was shot, it is claimed.
He told the IPAT that his mother passed out upon seeing her husband being shot. When she awoke, she threw a glass vase at the soldiers but she, too, was fatally shot.
He submitted he was then hit on the head by a soldier with a gun and woke up in a military vehicle while the home was on fire.
An FLEC member later confirmed that his parents were dead and their bodies were found inside the burning house.
When asked by the IPAT of his fears to return to Angola, the man responded: "The night they killed my father and mother... I came around inside a police car and I saw the house burning and my kids screaming and I was made a prisoner."
The IPAT found the applicant had "a number of inconsistencies" in his description of the fatal incidents, creating a sufficient doubt about his credibility.
The tribunal found that the man had initially said his father had been hit in the head but then said in his appeal interview his father had been shot.
The IPAT asked why there were different accounts of both parents being shot and he said he had been "misinterpreted".
The tribunal noted that in respect of his mother, the man had mentioned her shooting in his initial questionnaire and appeal but not in his oral interview.
The man said he was "psychologically shocked" and that it had been "some time ago".
In his judgment, Judge Garrett Simons said it would be incorrect for the IPAT to infer that the applicant had confused which parent was shot and when and that the man had been consistent throughout the immigration process in stating that both his parents had been killed.
The judge said the IPAT erred in law in purporting to infer that the applicant "has been inconsistent in relation to a crucial detail of his core claim, namely, which family members had been killed at the incident in the family home".
The judge said it is unfair and contrary to legislation to put a "partial account of the claimant’s previous statements to him, and then seek to rely on the claimant’s understandable confusion in response to the questioning to reach an adverse finding on credibility".
He then set aside the June 2024 refusal decision and remitted the matter for "reconsideration by a differently-constituted panel of the IPAT".
