Docket: IMM-2679-15
Citation:
2016 FC 631
Ottawa, Ontario, June 7, 2016
PRESENT: The
Honourable Mr. Justice O'Reilly
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BETWEEN:
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MEHMET SEFA
VERIM
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Applicant
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and
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THE MINISTER OF
CITIZENSHIP
AND IMMIGRATION
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Respondent
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JUDGMENT AND REASONS
I.
Overview
[1]
In 2014, Mr Mehmet Sefa Verim sought refugee
protection in Canada on the basis that he had experienced persecution in Turkey
as an ethnic Kurd and an adherent to the Yezidi faith. He claimed that Turkish ultra-nationalists
had raided his home, attacked his brother and mother, and stabbed him in a
separate attack in 1999. In addition, he asserted that he had endured
mistreatment at the hands of the Turkish police, including detentions,
interrogations and beatings. He fled Turkey and sought asylum in the United
States. However, he abandoned his US claim and sought refugee protection in
Canada instead.
[2]
A panel of the Immigration and Refugee Board
rejected Mr Verim’s claim primarily for lack of credible evidence. The Board
found that Mr Verim had omitted important details about the 1999 stabbing from
his written narrative, and concluded that it probably did not occur. The Board
also drew adverse inferences from the omission of other details from Mr Verim’s
narrative, finding that those details were likely added later to embellish his
claim. Further, the Board was not persuaded by Mr Verim’s explanation for the
abandonment of his US asylum claim and it found that the events in Turkey
pointed to discrimination rather than persecution. It concluded that there was
no credible basis for Mr Verim’s request for refugee protection in Canada,
which meant that he could not appeal the Board’s decision to the Refugee Appeal
Division.
[3]
Mr Verim maintains that the Board rendered an
unreasonable decision to the extent that it made adverse credibility findings based
on the omissions from his narrative and the circumstances surrounding his US
asylum claim. He also contends that the Board failed to apply the proper
definition of a refugee and unreasonably concluded that his claim lacked a
credible basis. He asks me to quash the Board’s decision and order another
panel to reconsider his claim.
[4]
I agree that the Board’s conclusions were
unreasonable and must, therefore, allow this application for judicial review.
The sole issue is whether the Board’s decision was unreasonable.
II.
Was the Board’s decision unreasonable?
[5]
The Minister asserts that the Board applied the
proper refugee definition, and rendered reasonable credibility findings.
Therefore, according to the Minister, the Board’s decision should not be
overturned.
[6]
I agree with the Minister that the Board applied
the proper test. However, I disagree with the Minister’s assertion that that
the Board made reasonable credibility findings. Therefore, I must allow this
application for judicial review.
[7]
Mr Verim suggests that the Board applied the
wrong test when it stated that he would not face persecution in Turkey. The
proper question, he says, is whether he would be exposed to more than a mere
possibility of persecution. I agree with that framing of the question, however,
I do not find that the Board applied the wrong test. The Board concluded that Mr
Verim would face no persecution in Turkey from ultra-nationalists. It follows,
as a matter of logic, that he would not face more than a mere possibility of
persecution. Similarly, when the Board found that the claimant would not be
exposed to persecution with regards to his sur place claim, this was
another articulation of the same conclusion. If the Board had stated that the
claimant failed to establish that he would be persecuted, it would have erred
by setting the bar too high – on that standard, the claimant could still face
more than a mere possibility of persecution and his or her claim would have
been wrongly rejected. I see no error in the Board’s decision in this respect.
[8]
While the Board applied the correct test, some
of its credibility findings were unreasonable. In particular, it found that Mr
Verim had failed to provide sufficient details in his written narrative,
thereby casting doubt on the credibility of his assertions. In particular, the
Board noted that Mr Verim had failed to mention that the police had refused to
lay charges in relation to the 1999 stabbing and he had not given a complete
description of his injuries from that attack. Mr Verim had amended his
narrative to include those particulars, but the Board found that he had not
adequately explained why they had been omitted in the first place. In my view,
Mr Verim was simply providing additional details that elaborated on his claim.
I see no basis for the Board’s conclusion that the attack did not occur.
[9]
Further, the Board noted that Mr Verim had not
listed the specific questions police had put to him about his membership in the
PKK when he was detained in 2014, and had not disclosed the number of
individuals who had been arrested alongside him on that occasion. As a result,
the Board made additional adverse credibility findings against Mr Verim. Again,
these facts appear to me simply to be additional details added to Mr Verim’s
narrative. I see no basis for concluding that their omission undermined Mr
Verim’s credibility.
[10]
The Board also found that Mr Verim’s explanation
for dropping his US asylum claim was not credible, and contradicted his
subjective fear of persecution. However, the Board did not acknowledge that Mr
Verim’s US claim was actually found to be credible by US Homeland Security. The
basis for the Board’s finding that Mr Verim was forum shopping by abandoning his
US claim in favour of his Canadian application is not borne out by the
evidence.
[11]
Finally, in light of the above, I find that the
Board’s conclusion that Mr Verim’s claim had no credible basis was
unreasonable. The Board accepted that Mr Verim was a Kurd who supported the
Kurdish cause and that his activities came to the attention of the authorities.
This was sufficient, in my view, taking into account the documentary evidence, for
the Board to conclude that there was a credible basis for Mr Verim’s claim. Its
conclusion to the contrary was, therefore, unreasonable.
III.
Conclusion and Disposition
The Board made a number of adverse
credibility findings against Mr Verim that were not supported by the evidence.
Its conclusions do not represent a defensible outcome based on the facts and
the law – they were unreasonable. Therefore, I must allow this application for
judicial review. Neither party proposed a question of general importance for me
to certify, and none is stated.
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