AA/07551/2015

• Status of case: Unreported
• Hearing date: 8 Nov 2016
• Promulgation date: 18 Nov 2016
• Publication date: 4 Sep 2020
• Last updated on: 4 Sep 2020

The decision

Upper Tribunal
(Immigration and Asylum Chamber) Appeal Number: AA/07551/2015

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Heard at Belfast
Decision & Reasons Promulgated
On 8 November 2016
On 18 November 2016



Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE RINTOUL

Between
P P
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant


and



secretary of state for the home department
Respondent


Representation:

For the Appellant: Ms B Muldoon, Solicitor
For the Respondent: Mr S Whitwell, Presenting Officer


DECISION AND REASONS

1. The appellant appeals with permission against the decision of First-tier Tribunal Judge S Fox, dismissing his appeal under the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 against the respondent's decision made on 23 April 2015 to refuse his claim for asylum and to remove him from the United Kingdom


2. The appellant is a citizen of Iran whose case is that he is at risk of serious ill-treatment on return to Iran on account of imputed political opinion, that flowing from his consumption of alcohol and then urinating from the roof of his house towards the mosque, an act video recorded by people at the mosque. This was taken so seriously that a warrant was issued against him for a sentence of death to be carried out. As a result, his family made arrangements for him to be smuggled out of Iran.

3. The respondent did not accept the appellant account apart from his nationality.

4. The appellant's representatives had, prior to the hearing on 15 March 2016, prepared a substantial bundle of material which, it appeared had not reached the Tribunal. The judge records in his decision [3] that despite an offer from the appellant's representatives to provide a second bundle, this in fact did not occur before the judge proceeded to determine the appeal.

5. There is now no dispute between the parties that the bundle was in fact served on the First-tier Tribunal. For reasons which are not at all clear, that bundle appears to have been forwarded to the First-tier Tribunal in Birmingham. The parties are in agreement that there was a procedural error of which the judge was unaware (and could not have been aware), capable of amounting to a material error of law whereby the appellant did not have a fair hearing. It is thus agreed, pursuant to rule 40(3) of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008, that the appeal is allowed and remitted to the First-tier Tribunal for a fresh decision on all relevant issues.


SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS

1 The decision of the First-tier Tribunal did involve the making of an error of law and I set it aside.
2 I remit the decision to the First-tier Tribunal for a fresh determination on all relevant issued.
3 The appeal is not to be heard by First-tier Tribunal Judge S T Fox.


Signed Date: 17 November 2016


Upper Tribunal Judge Rintoul