SWBB v Minister for Immigration & Multicultural & Indigenous Affairs [2004] FCA 1149

FEDERAL COURT OF AUSTRALIA

SWBB v Minister for Immigration & Multicultural & Indigenous Affairs [2004] FCA 1149 SWBB v MINISTER FOR IMMIGRATION & MULTICULTURAL & INDIGENOUS AFFAIRS No S 108 of 2004 FINN J ADELAIDE 6 SEPTEMBER 2004

IN THE FEDERAL COURT OF AUSTRALIA

SOUTH AUSTRALIA DISTRICT REGISTRY S 108 OF 2004

BETWEEN: SWBB

APPLICANT

AND: MINISTER FOR IMMIGRATION & MULTICULTURAL & INDIGENOUS AFFAIRS

RESPONDENT

JUDGE: FINN J

DATE OF ORDER: 6 SEPTEMBER 2004

WHERE MADE: ADELAIDE

THE COURT ORDERS THAT: The application be dismissed with costs.

Note: Settlement and entry of orders is dealt with in Order 36 of the Federal Court Rules.

IN THE FEDERAL COURT OF AUSTRALIA

SOUTH AUSTRALIA DISTRICT REGISTRY S 108 OF 2004

BETWEEN: SWBB

APPLICANT

AND: MINISTER FOR IMMIGRATION & MULTICULTURAL & INDIGENOUS AFFAIRS

RESPONDENT

JUDGE: FINN J

DATE: 6 SEPTEMBER 2004

PLACE: ADELAIDE

REASONS FOR JUDGMENT 1 The applicant in this matter is entitled to have a sense of grievance with the Tribunal's reasons for decision in refusing his application for a protection visa. They contain flippantly offensive comment and are marked as much by bare assertion as by explanation. 2 The applicant is an Albanian who founded his claim for refugee status on three separate bases. The first was participation in two "blood feuds". The second was by reason of membership of a particular social group of businessmen. The third alleged persecution by reason of political opinion.

FACTUAL SETTING 3 This can be stated relatively shortly. 4 The applicant and his father opened a shop in 1997 which they later converted into a bar/restaurant. This venture proved successful and they later became the subjects of extortion by a criminal gang which included the Cufe family. After one extortion demand which he refused to pay, the applicant and his father decided they should report the gang to the police but elsewhere than at their local police station. 5 The applicant drove with a relative, Sokol, to Tirana to make the complaint but was informed that the complaint should be made to their local station. In the course of the attempted complaint he named the Cufe family as being in the gang. On their return home they stopped at his aunt's house where they were invited to stay the night. Sokol needed to return to Berat. He took the applicant's car and was shot and killed on the way home. 6 The applicant assumed that Sokol had been shot by mistake; that he was the intended victim; that the perpetrators were the Cufe gang; that the Tirana police had notified them of the applicant's whereabouts; and that the attempt to kill him was as punishment for his reporting the gang to the police and/his refusal to pay when the last extortion demand was made. 7 Sokol's brother avenged the murder by shooting one of the Cufe brothers before departing immediately to France where he died some time later. The applicant has no details of the circumstances of his death. 8 The applicant did not return to his home from his aunt's house. He went to Tirana from where he was smuggled to Italy. He then came to Australia.