AA/10371/2012

• Status of case: Unreported
• Promulgation date: 24 Jun 2013
• Last updated on: 26 Nov 2013

The decision

Upper Tribunal
(Immigration and Asylum Chamber) Appeal Number: AA/10371/2012


THE IMMIGRATION ACTS


Heard at Field House
Date sent
On 8 April 2013
On 24 June 2013




Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE STOREY

Between

ZAFAR AHMED KHAN

Appellant
and

THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT

Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr A Finch from Thompson & Co Solicitors
For the Respondent: Mr G Saunders, Home Office Presenting Officer


DETERMINATION AND REASONS

1. The appellant is a national of Pakistan. He is an Ahmadi. It is not in dispute that on 8 November 2012 the respondent refused him leave to enter having rejected his asylum claim. On 23 January 2013 First-tier Tribunal (FtT) Judge M A Khan dismissed his appeal against that decision. The appellant's success in being granted permission to appeal brings the matter before me.

2. I am not persuaded that the First-tier Tribunal judge erred in law. When he heard this case he had before him the latest country guidance case MN and others (Ahamdis – country conditions – risk) Pakistan CG [2012] UKUT 00389 (IAC) and it is clear that he adhered closely to its guidance when hearing and assessing the evidence.

3. The first ground contends that the judge failed to consider adequately material evidence in the form of an Ahmadiyya Muslim Association UK (AMA UK) letter dated 10 December 2012 submitted by the appellant as evidence of his religious activities. The judge found this evidence unreliable because there was a discrepancy between the dates it gave as to when the appellant said he had served as a Nazim in Pakistan as compared with the dates he had given in his screening interview. It is argued that the judge’s dismissal of this evidence was at odds with the positive comments made about the bona fides of the AMA in MN at [66] and [122]. However, nothing said in MN sought to pre-judge whether any particular AMA evidence was credible and indeed [122] of MN (cited by the judge at [46]) makes clear that at its highest AMA evidence was “[e]vidence likely to be relevant”. It is argued that the appellant had provided an explanation for the discrepancy; but the judge considered the reliability of the AMA letter in the context of the evidence as a whole and was entitled to reject it. Given his rejection of it he was not obliged to attach weight to its other observations about aspects of Ahmadi activities.

4. The second ground advanced was that the judge failed to correctly apply the guidance given in MN when it came to assessment of the appellant's evidence that in Pakistan “he would speak to friends and colleagues about his religion and that he would invite friends to watch the Ahmadi channel at a house” [34]. Miss Finch pointed out that these activities clearly come within what MN defined as [2(i)] behaviour1 and its observation at [122] of the need to establish whether it is of particular importance to the religious identity of the Ahmadi concerned to engage in [2(i)] behaviour. However on the appellant's own evidence he did not consider he was under any kind of threat until the September 2012 incident and the burden of his claim was that he had been persecuted for preaching his religion. It was open to the judge to find that insofar as the appellant relied on such activities as described in [34] he had provided “no evidence to show that he was targeted by the non-Ahamdis specifically for these activities despite his claim that he belonged to a prominent Ahmadi family, and live[d] in a large house, in a prominent position in Lahore”. It is sufficiently clear that the judge considered that the activities described in [34] did not establish his level of actual religious activity caused him any problems or was likely to. I would observe that on the appellant's own evidence he had chosen to return to Pakistan in December 2012 and had only claimed asylum because of the events that, he claimed, took place in September 2012.

5. The third ground challenges the judge’s finding that the appellant's account of the September 2012 event was not credible. It is submitted that (i) the appellant had described two incidents, a heated workplace argument with two Hafiz boys regarding the preaching of his father and a separate incident relating to a discussion the appellant had with another boy who had been caught stealing; and that (ii) the judge has confused the two incidents. It is submitted that the appellant's witness statement makes no reference to any argument with the Hafiz boys. However the crux of the appellant's claim was that the subsequent attack on him by three men in an area outside Lahore was a direct result of “the fact that he had a heated argument with two boys who were Hafiz .. about his faith” [26]; see also Q53 and Q4 and Q39 of the SEF. He had had to reprimand two boys for items going missing and had had a heated argument at his workplace with them; they were Hafiz [25]. If there was any confusion of two incidents at the factory, it stemmed from the appellant's own evidence and in any event, whether two separate incidents or not, the appellant clearly staked his claim on his having become a target because of arguments at his workplace with two Hafiz boys. The judge did not disbelieve his account through any confusion about different workplace incidents but because of the appellant's different account of what his attackers had said to him and what he had said to them: “I find that the appellant added the fact about the confirmation of his name [Zafar] in his second interview and his oral evidence was different to both of the interview statements”. That was an entirely sustainable assessment and involved no misunderstanding.

6. The fourth and final ground challenges the judge’s treatment of the appellant's evidence about his claimed Ahmadi activities in the UK which relied on what was said in the AMA UK letter of 10 December 2012 to which reference has already been made. It was submitted that the judge failed to make adequate findings on the appellant’s religious activities in the UK and had not considered the evidence that he participated in a dedicated preaching stall. I consider this challenge founders in face of the evident fact that the judge clearly did not consider that this letter, taken together with the evidence as a whole (particularly the appellant’s own evidence about these activities), withstood scrutiny. He noted that despite stating he spent two and a half hours at the mosques, the appellant did not know the name of the Imam who led the prayer. The grounds do not dispute that the appellant was unable to furnish this information and, as already noted, the judge was entitled to find the AMA letter unreliable.

7. For the above reasons I consider that the grounds fail to identify any error in the judge’s findings of fact or in his application of the relevant country guidance to the evidence produced by the appellant.

8. Accordingly, the judge’s decision to dismiss the appellant's appeal must stand.


Signed Date


Upper Tribunal Judge Storey