AA/13254/2015

• Status of case: Unreported
• Hearing date: 11 Aug 2016
• Promulgation date: 15 Aug 2016
• Publication date: 19 Jan 2018
• Last updated on: 19 Jan 2018

The decision

Upper Tribunal
(Immigration and Asylum Chamber) Appeal Number: AA/13254/2015


THE IMMIGRATION ACTS


Heard at : Field House
Decision Promulgated
On : 11 August 2016
On : 15 August 2016



Before


UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE KEBEDE


Between

neli [u]

Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:

For the Appellant: Mr M Murphy, instructed by Duncan Lewis & Co Solicitors
For the Respondent: Mr E Tufan, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer


DECISION AND REASONS

1. The appellant, a national of Georgia born on [ ] 1983, arrived in the United Kingdom on 8 August 2014 with a tourist visa expiring on 14 January 2015. On 23 February 2015 she made an appointment to claim asylum and did so formally on 4 March 2015. She was interviewed about her asylum claim which was then refused on 13 November 2015. She appealed against the refusal decision. Her appeal was heard in the First-tier Tribunal on 3 May 2016 and dismissed. Following an unsuccessful application for permission to appeal to the Upper Tribunal, permission was granted in the Upper Tribunal on 11 July 2016.

The Appellant's Case

2. The appellant is a Yazidi Kurd. Her claim is that her father had, several years previously, agreed with his brother that she would marry his son [Y], who was a convicted murderer and had been sentenced to 15 years in prison in Georgia. She was unaware of the arrangement until the day of their engagement, in June 2014, when her father told her about it and told her that she had no say in the matter. She also referred to the engagement party being in June 2013. She was due to get married to [Y] in October 2014 after he came out of prison. In the meantime the appellant met her current partner and father of her child, [ON], in 2003 (or 2007) and they kept in touch secretly and continued to keep in touch after [ON] came to the UK in 2010. After the engagement party she was so depressed that she took an overdose of tablets and had to have her stomach pumped in hospital. Her sister then made arrangements for her to leave Georgia and come to the UK and she went to the British Embassy to have her photograph and fingerprints taken. She did not return home to her father after that and she left Georgia on 8 August 2014 on her own passport with a visitor visa. When she arrived in the UK, [ON], who was in the UK as an asylum seeker, took her to live with his friends. His family did not know about her, but when she was pregnant with his child he told his family who were initially unhappy but were subsequently supportive. Since coming to the UK her sister had told her that her family was looking for her. She could not return to Georgia as she would be killed by her father for dishonouring the family by having a child and not marrying her cousin.

3. The respondent, in refusing the appellant's claim on 13 November 2015, accepted that the appellant was in a relationship with [ON] in the UK and that they had a child together, [C], born on [ ] 2015, but did not accept that she had met [ON] in Georgia in the circumstances claimed, owing to various inconsistencies and discrepancies in her account. The respondent did not accept the appellant's account of her engagement to her paternal cousin, as it was inconsistent with the background information which stated that Yazidi girls usually married at the age of 13 whereas she was 30 or 31 when she was told about the proposed marriage. The respondent noted that the appellant's passport was issued in April 2014, which pre-dated her claim of having been told of her engagement in June 2014. It was noted that she had used a previous passport to travel to Bulgaria in August 2009 for tourism, but that was inconsistent with her claim that her parents were traditional and that she led an unsheltered and uneducated life. The respondent noted that the appellant had given inconsistent dates for her engagement, that she had named a different person as her partner in her visa application form and that her Facebook profile indicated that she had a good relationship with her brother and that her sister openly supported her family in the UK contrary to her claim. As such it was not accepted that she was engaged to her paternal cousin or that she was at risk of forced marriage or honour killing in Georgia.

4. The appellant's appeal against that decision was heard by Designated Judge Manuell and First-tier Tribunal Judge Housego sitting as a panel. The panel heard from the appellant, her partner [ON] and [ON]'s father [GN] and considered a country expert report from Mr William Dunbar. The panel did not find the appellant's claim to be credible. The panel found that parts of the appellant's evidence were inconsistent with the expert report; that it was implausible that she would put herself at risk by communicating with her sister and sister-in-law through Facebook on her father's computer if she feared her father and brother; that she had given an inconsistent account of her journey to the UK and the arrangements made for the journey; that the evidence indicated that the appellant's relationship with [ON] was well-established in Georgia; and that the appellant's account of her engagement was inconsistent with the objective evidence as to the age of Yazidi community arranged marriages. The panel also relied on numerous other inconsistencies in the appellant's evidence and rejected the explanations given by the appellant for those inconsistencies. The panel concluded that the appellant had arrived on a visit visa not intending to return to Georgia but intending to live permanently in the UK with [ON]. They rejected the remainder of her account and found that she would not be at risk in Georgia and could return there with [ON] and their child and that their removal would not breach their human rights.

5. Permission was sought on behalf of the appellant to appeal to the Upper Tribunal on the grounds that the panel had failed fully and properly to consider the expert report which found the appellant's claim to be wholly plausible, and had failed properly to consider the evidence of the appellant and the witnesses.

6. Permission was initially refused, but was subsequently granted on a renewed application on 11 July 2016.

Appeal Hearing

7. Mr Murphy submitted that the fact that the expert had said that "honour killings" were unknown in Georgia did not mean that the appellant's account was untruthful, as was the panel's conclusion at [67]. The expert had otherwise confirmed that the situation regarding violence against women in Georgia was dire and that the appellant's account, of having brought shame on her family and risked being beaten by her father, was credible. Although the panel relied upon the expert's view that the police in Georgia were trustworthy, the report also highlighted the fact that there was inadequate protection offered by the police in the case of violence against women, which the panel failed to take into account. The panel had also wrongly found the evidence to be contradictory in regard to the appellant's marital status, whereas the expert had properly found that the appellant and her partner were unmarried and would be at risk in Georgia as an unmarried couple with a child. The panel had been wrong to find that the witnesses had exaggerated the risk. The panel had relied upon a list of negative factors in rejecting the appellant's account, some of which were unsustainable, whereas the core of her account was credible, as the expert had accepted.

8. In response, Mr Tufan submitted that it was not for the expert to say whether the appellant's account was credible. The panel had considered the expert report at several points in their decision and were not required to accept everything that the expert said. There were significant credibility concerns in the appellant's case and the panel had been entitled to make the adverse credibility findings that they did.

9. In response Mr Murphy reiterated the points previously made and submitted that the expert had been entitled to find the appellant's account to be credible to the extent that it fitted within the background evidence. The panel had been wrong to find that the appellant had exaggerated her account and had wrongly directed themselves.

Consideration and findings

10. The grounds take issue with the panel's conclusions on the expert's report, submitting that the expert's views that honour killings were unknown in Georgia, that there was no risk of physical violence towards the appellant's child and that the police were trustworthy were wrongly relied upon by the panel in concluding that the appellant's account was untruthful. It is asserted that in fact the expert had found the appellant's account of the threat of violence from her father and inadequate police protection to be consistent with the country information, particularly where the affairs of an ethnic minority group such as the Yazidis was concerned.

11. However all three witnesses, in their statements, clearly described the risk to the appellant in terms of honour killing, with the appellant stating at [7] of her statement that her family would kill her and her daughter if she did not marry her cousin since she had brought dishonour on them. At [9] of his statement, the appellant's partner also spoke of honour and tradition, as did his father at [6] of his statement. Whilst it is the case that the expert considered the appellant's account to be consistent with the prevalence of violence against women in Georgia, the panel were entitled to consider the witness's emphasis on the question of tradition and honour and the suggestion that the appellant's daughter would be killed as being to some extent inconsistent with the country information described by the expert.

12. It is also asserted on behalf of the appellant that the panel were wrong to criticise the expert at [67] for considering that the appellant and her partner faced a risk on return as an unmarried couple when they were indeed unmarried. However it seems to me that the panel were entitled to place weight upon the fact that the appellant described herself as married (Mr Tufan referred to question 72 of the appellant's interview where she described [ON] as her husband) and that all three witnesses considered her to be married in the eyes of the Yazidi and to therefore consider the expert's conclusions in that context.

13. In any event, what is clear from the panel's decision is that they gave full and careful consideration to the expert report. It is also clear that the expert report went no further than concluding that the appellant's account was plausible and consistent with the country information. The report did not address the many other concerns which the panel had about the appellant's account.

14. At [68] to [85] the panel referred to numerous discrepancies and inconsistencies in the appellant's account and in the evidence of the three witnesses. At [68], [69] and [85] the panel considered the evidence about the appellant communicating with her partner and her sister and sister-in-law via Facebook on her father's computer to be entirely inconsistent with the background information on literacy and gender roles in the Yazidi community and inconsistent with her claim to be in fear of her father and brother. At [70] to [73] and [75] to [79] the panel referred to inconsistences in the evidence about the appellant's travel arrangements and journey to the UK, and her communication with her sister. At [80] the panel referred to the appellant's account of her arranged marriage being inconsistent with the background information about marriages in the Yazidi community. Other adverse points were made at [83] and [84]. None of these matters are addressed in the expert report or challenged in the grounds, but they were all matters which the panel were entitled to rely upon as giving rise to serious concerns about the credibility of the appellant's claim.

15. In addition the panel, at [74], identified specific inconsistencies and direct contradictions in the accounts given by the appellant. The grounds address some of these inconsistencies and attempt to provide an explanation for them, and rely also upon the explanations offered by the appellant. However the panel considered the explanations given by the appellant, at [74], and gave cogent reasons for rejecting them.

16. In light of these numerous and significant inconsistencies and discrepancies in the evidence the panel were entirely entitled to conclude that the appellant's claim was not a credible one. At [87] to [89] the panel set out the only facts that they were able to accept. They concluded that it had always been the intention for the appellant to join her partner in the UK and to remain here permanently and that the rest of the claim, namely the account of her engagement to her cousin and the threats from her family, were simply not true. They concluded that the appellant could return to Georgia with her partner and child and would be at no risk on return. Those conclusions were entirely and properly open to them on the evidence before them, took full account of the expert report and background country information, and were fully supported by clear and cogent reasoning.

17. For all of these reasons I find that the appellant's grounds of appeal do not disclose any errors of law in the panel's decision.

DECISION

18. The making of the decision of the First-tier Tribunal did not involve an error on a point of law. I do not set aside the decision. The decision to dismiss the appeal stands.



Signed Date 15/08/2016
Upper Tribunal Judge Kebede