The case concerned an applicant from Iraq whose application for asylum, based on conversion to Christianity in Finland, was rejected by the Finnish Immigration Service. The Eastern Administrative Court in Finland organised an oral hearing in order to investigate on religious beliefs and further rejected the appeal.

The applicant further appealed against the negative decision of the administrative court. The Supreme Administrative Court allowed the leave to appeal and analysed whether due to deficiencies in the interpretation during the oral hearing, the information received by the administrative court was sufficient and reliable as basis for the decision.

The Supreme Administrative Court found that during the oral hearing the interpretation of the applicant’s statements were lacking, and it appeared that the interpreted text was either partly lacking or difficult to understand or even impossible to understand in some parts. The Supreme Administrative Court stated that in view of the deficiencies in the recordings and the events presented, as a whole, raised serious reasons to have doubts on the accuracy and content of the interpretation of the information presented by the applicant. The court considered that these shortcomings had a detrimental effect on the understanding of the applicant’s statements and on the assessment of his conversion to Christianity. Consequently, the statements and explanations provided during the oral hearing cannot be considered sufficiently reliable for the decision. The contested decision was annulled and the case was referred back for the administrative court to organise a new oral hearing.