A.J.D.A. 1995, 399
Case Mlle Gal

27 January 1995

Given that when an applicant for the status of refugee has applied in vain to the Commission on Refugee Status and has had a second application rejected by the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons, a further application to the Commission cannot be entertained by it unless the applicant can establish facts arising, or coming to his knowledge, after the first decision, those facts, if proved, being sufficient to justify his fear of persecution;

Given that after the Commission on Refugee Status had, on 5 June 1987, confirmed the initial rejection on 13 January 1986 of Mlle Gal’s first application, Mlle Gal presented a new request on 11 July 1988 which was rejected by the Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons on 19 December 1988 and again by the Commission on Refugee Status in its decision of 8 October 1990, now under attack, the ground being that Mll Gal had adduced no new fact;

Given that at the hearing before the Office in 1988 Mlle Gal put in evidence the judgment of a criminal court in Hungary, her country of origin, sentencing her in her absence to a year’s imprisonment for political activities, and that while this judgment was handed down in June 1986 before the first decision of the Commission, Mlle Gal’s uncontradicted evidence was that she was already in France at the time and did not learn of it until May 1988, that is, until after the decision of the Commission, and so was unable to adduce it; given that this criminal conviction must, in view of its basis and purpose, be treated as a new fact capable of enhancing the applicant’s fear of persecution rather than as merely a further element of evidence, and that therefore the Commission on Refugee Status, despite its unappealable power to verify the authenticity and evidential force of the judgment produced by Mlle Gal, nevertheless, by refusing to investigate the validity of the applicant’s renewed request and merely rejecting it as unacceptable, misapplied the provisions of the Law of 25 July 1952;

Given that it follows that on this ground alone Mlle Gal is entitled to demand the annulment of the decision of the Commission dated 8 October 1990;

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