Tribunal decisions

The decision

Upper Tribunal
(Immigration and Asylum Chamber) Appeal Number: AA/05472/2015

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Heard at Glasgow
Determination issued
on 18th August 2016
on 7th September 2016

Before

upper tribunal JUDGE MACLEMAN

Between

satpal singh
Appellant
and

THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

For the Appellant: Mr Ruddy, of Jain Neil & Ruddy, Solicitors
For the Respondent: Mrs Pettersen, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

DETERMINATION AND REASONS
1. The appellant identifies himself as a citizen of Afghanistan. His date of birth is recorded as 1st January 1979. He has not asked for an anonymity order.
2. The appellant first sought asylum in the UK in 2002 to 2003. His claim to be Afghan was rejected by the respondent and by a judge upon appeal. He did not keep in touch with the respondent thereafter and was recorded as having absconded. He claims to have returned to Afghanistan. In July 2009 he sought asylum in Belgium, which was refused and his appeal dismissed. He says that when due to be removed from Belgium to Afghanistan in October 2013, he arranged for an agent to bring him and his family to the UK where he again sought asylum. The respondent refused that claim for reasons explained in a letter dated 10th March 2015.
3. The appellant appealed to the First-tier Tribunal. Judge Dennis dismissed his appeal in a decision promulgated on 19th November 2015, accepting the appellant to be a Sikh but rejecting his claim to be Afghan.
4. The appellant sought permission to appeal to the Upper Tribunal. His grounds run to twelve paragraphs over nine pages, seeking to identify various errors of fact and failures to give the appellant the opportunity to respond to adverse points.
5. First-tier Tribunal Judge Andrew refused permission to appeal to the UT, observing that there might be some discrepancies in the judge's recording of the evidence but nothing which might amount to a material error of law.
6. The appellant applied again to the Upper Tribunal, relying upon the previous grounds and adding a further four pages.
7. UT Judge Perkins granted permission to appeal to the Upper Tribunal, observing at the same time that the appellant:
"? must be careful to show (if such be the case) that the FtT misunderstood the evidence rather than read it in a way that the appellant does not favour. It may be the case will fall apart when the contentions ... can be scrutinised with the benefit of assistance from both parties."
8. Mr Ruddy based his submissions on the first set of grounds. He relied firstly on ground 1, which contends that the judge had no evidence to justify his suggestion that the family shop in Jalalabad might have been manned by the appellant's older brother as well as by his father, when there was no notice to the appellant that it might be thought that his older brother was in Afghanistan. If he had been given the opportunity, he would have clarified that his brother left Afghanistan in 2001.
9. Ground 2 criticises the judge for failing to give fair notice of his point that the identity document of the appellant's daughter gave her occupation as "shopkeeper". The ground says that had the appellant been asked, he would have advised the judge that it was common in Afghanistan for the occupation section of a child's document to contain the occupation of the father.
10. Ground 3 criticises the judge for saying that an incident occurred "four or five months" before the family left Afghanistan whereas the evidence in his statement was that it occurred four or five days before. Mr Ruddy said that this error might be significant on its own to undermine the determination, as the timeline of the family's departure was a key aspect of their claim.
11. A second point raised in ground 3 argues that although the judge thought that the person who threatened the appellant at the family shop did not identify himself, it was clear from a fair reading of the appellant's account that this person was acting on behalf of the Taliban, and not as the judge thought at paragraph 32 on behalf of an "unnamed group".
12. Ground 4 criticises the judge for finding a discrepancy over the period the appellant was given to surrender himself to the Taliban, which was clearly ten days.
13. I observed in course of submissions that the judge's real point was not a discrepancy in the length of the period of notice, but the implausibility of anyone being given a date and place to surrender freely for execution.
14. Mr Ruddy submitted that while the rest of the detailed points contained in the grounds might not separately be enough to show material error, the foregoing principal points, taken with the rest, were sufficient for the decision to be set aside.
15. Mrs Pettersen submitted as follows. The reference to "four or five months" rather than to "four or five days" was plainly only a slip of the pen, because the judge had not gone on to take any point based on delay in departure from Afghanistan. He gave the matter no adverse significance. The same applied to Ground 1, which was no more than a passing observation. Ground 3 was misconceived, because the judge at paragraph 10 was simply recording the evidence to the effect that the Taliban was behind the threat. It was not an adverse finding. The appellant had been on notice throughout that his credibility was in issue, and that he had to make his case. The judge was entitled to consider the evidence after the hearing. Nothing had occurred to him which required re-listing of the case for further submissions to ensure a fair hearing. For example, the judge was criticised for saying at paragraph 33 that the appellant's reason for not going to the police, being lack of useful information to provide to them, was not a good one, because the police could have been told where and when a meeting had been arranged and did not need the name of a suspect. That was a sensible observation open to the judge. It did not require a further opportunity to be given to the appellant to comment, and in any event he had not suggested that he had any further explanation to offer.
16. I reserved my determination.
17. I do not find any point in the grounds which rises above selective disagreement on the facts. I find no individual point of much force. As a whole, I do not consider the grounds to undermine the judge's decision.
18. The decision should be read fairly and as a whole, and in context. The appellant has repeatedly failed over many years to establish his claim to be Afghan. It was rejected in previous appeal proceedings both in the UK and in Belgium. His notable ignorance of Afghanistan when he made his original claim is specified at paragraph 24 of the decision. Although he says his family were shopkeepers he knows neither Dari nor Pashtu and he incorrectly said that there were no coins in circulation in Afghanistan. The judge was entitled to find that these significant failures were not accounted for in the appellant's evidence and that improved knowledge subsequently did not remedy the deficiencies. As to events arising after he (allegedly) returned to Afghanistan, the judge was entitled to say at paragraph 31, "The idea that you would invite someone ten days hence to meet at a place where they promised to shoot you is frankly risible".
19. There is nothing in the grounds which persuades me that the judge's decision, read fairly and as a whole, falls in any way short of an adequate explanation to the appellant of why the credibility of his claim has been rejected.
20. The decision in the First-tier Tribunal shall stand.

1 September 2016
Upper Tribunal Judge Macleman