Tribunal decisions

The decision

Upper Tribunal
(Immigration and Asylum Chamber) Appeal Number: PA/05721/2019

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Heard at Field House
Decision & Reasons Promulgated
On 25 March 2021 & 18 January 2022
On the 28th April 2022

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE GLEESON
DEPUTY UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE SYMES

Between

KH IRAQ
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the appellant: Mr Michael Brooks (counsel instructed by CB Solicitors)
For the respondent: Mr Tony Melvin (Senior Home Office Presenting Officer)

DECISION AND REASONS
Anonymity
Pursuant to Rule 14 of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008 (SI 2008/269), until this appeal is finally determined the appellant is granted anonymity.
No-one shall publish or reveal any information, including the name or address of the appellant or their family members, which would be likely to lead members of the public to identify the appellant or any member of their family.
Failure to comply with this order could amount to a contempt of court.
1. This appeal is brought against the First-tier Tribunal’s decision on 28 July 2020 to dismiss the appellant’s appeal against the respondent’s decision of 6 June 2019 to refuse him refugee status under the 1951 Convention, humanitarian protection, or leave to remain in the United Kingdom on human rights grounds.
2. The appellant’s appeal is based on the risk to him on return from the Komal Party (Komal), also known as the Kurdistan Islamic Group or KIK, a small Salafist right-wing Islamic party, founded in 1979. Komal split from the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan (IMIK) in 2001 and the country evidence before us indicates that it has pursued a political solution since then.
3. The appellant also claims to fear his father’s maternal cousin (‘the cousin’), and the cousin’s family, by reason of difficulties which the cousin is said to have experienced after the appellant failed to carry out an assassination ordered by Komal, in or about April 2018.
4. Finally, the appellant claims to have no access to a CSID or INID identity document which, applying SMO, KSP & IM (Article 15(c); identity documents) Iraq CG [2019] UKUT 00400 (IAC) ('SMO'), would put him at risk of an Article 3 ECHR breach on return.
Background
5. The appellant was born in 1981 in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq. Before leaving Iraq he lived with his father and mother. He married his wife in 2012. They have two children, born in 2014 and 2015; his family are dependants on his asylum claim.
6. The appellant's problems began in January 2016 when his father’s maternal cousin (“the cousin”) offered him a position as a security guard for the local office of the Komal Party (“Komal”), one of the political parties in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). The cousin held a position of authority within Komal. As the appellant‘s role was as an armed guard, he received some weapons training.
7. The appellant was not originally a member of Komal, but over time, he became familiar with their aims and objectives, and was sufficiently impressed that he joined the Party.
8. On 15 April 2019, the cousin approached the appellant with a view to recruiting him to be part of a three-man team that was to assassinate a senior PUK figure holding the rank of Major. The appellant refused and was detained by Komal for two days, and his weapon, identity card and mobile phone were taken from him; eventually the cousin came to see him, expressed his disappointment with his conduct, and attempted to persuade the appellant to take part in the mission. The appellant agreed to do so and was promised appropriate training to fulfil his role.
9. On his release, the appellant learned that the cousin had explained his brief disappearance by telling his family he had been sent to another city to complete a particular job. He became concerned as to the reasons why the cousin had preferred him for this mission rather than the cousin’s own two sons, themselves both Komal members. Nevertheless, at the time he felt that he himself must have been highly trusted by Komal, which was why he was chosen for such a sensitive mission.
10. The appellant was given a period of home leave at his father’s request, before receiving the promised training. Rather than fulfil the mission, on 21 April 2018 the appellant took the opportunity to flee Iraq with his wife and children, assisted by his brother, staying for three days with a maternal uncle in Chamchamal (65km west of Sulaymaniyah City in the same Governorate), then leaving Iraq and travelling to the UK via Turkey and another country where he was arrested and detained for a day (a Eurodac hit placed the appellant as having been fingerprinted in Italy in May 2018). The appellant attributed the ease with which he left Iraq on his own passport to the fact that Komal “is a powerless party, they don’t have authority over the checkpoints or anywhere”. The family travelled from Italy by lorry to the UK, arriving here on 12 January 2019.
11. Since coming to the UK, the appellant had learned that the cousin had been arrested and detained by Komal, since when there had been bad feeling between the cousin’s family and his own. His father told him that Komal were looking for him everywhere. Around June 2019 (after his full asylum interview in April 2019), the appellant’s account is that his father was visited by the cousin’s sons who told him that the cousin was not in a good way in prison and that if they found the appellant, they would hand him over to Komal in return for the cousin’s release. That was the last time he spoke to his father.
The refusal letter
12. On 6 June 2019, the respondent refused the appellant’s asylum claim. She accepted that the appellant was an Iraqi Kurd from Sulaymaniyah, but rejected the rest of his account as lacking credibility, relying on perceived inconsistencies regarding his claimed membership of Komal, his knowledge of Komal’s history and political profile, his knowledge of Komal’s main headquarters location, Komal’s need for a security guard, whether he had received training for the assassination, and whether the cousin remained in detention.
13. The respondent considered the appellant’s account of the cousin giving the appellant home leave with his family before his mission to be implausible, given the sensitivity of the planned mission and his questionable loyalty. She relied on the appellant’s failure to claim asylum in Italy, a safe third country, as further damaging his credibility.
14. The appellant appealed to the First-tier Tribunal.
First-tier Tribunal decision
15. Before the First-tier Tribunal the appellant contended that the international materials indicated that Komal had united with various other anti-Government factions, suggesting that its present reach was significantly greater than in the past.
16. On a return to Iraq, he would need to attend an administrative office to secure a new or replacement card, exposing him to risk from Komal or his cousin’s family, or to Article 3 violations due to inhuman or degrading living conditions if he forewent the acquisition of such a card, as set out in SMO.
17. In her decision of 28 July 2020 First-tier Tribunal Judge Gill rejected appellant’s account as lacking in credibility, even having regard to the lower standard applicable to international protection claims. In particular, she considered his evidence as to the location of Komal’s headquarters and the Party’s structure to be vague, and that other aspects of his asylum account lacked plausibility.
18. The judge accepted that the appellant had been a low level Komal member, who was employed to guard the Party offices. She did not consider it credible that he had lost touch with his family members: mere contact would not have put them at risk of harm and it was reasonable to think that he could obtain identity documents from the Iraqi Embassy or from his father. There were be no very significant obstacles to his integration on a return to Iraq.
19. The appellant appealed to the Upper Tribunal.
Error of law
20. Upper Tribunal Judge Finch granted permission to appeal. She found that the First-tier Tribunal had overlooked relevant evidence in the witness statements of the appellant and his witnesses, which was a material error of law. The judge had erred at the level of perversity in rejecting the credibility of the appellant’s account because it was consistent. A high degree of consistency did not necessarily mean that an account had been learned by rote.
21. As to the assessment of risk, the First-tier Tribunal had failed to ask relevant questions such as whether the paternal cousin was still detained and whether the appellant's father remained in Sulaymaniyah with the appellant's Civil Status Identity Card (CSID).
22. It now falls to us to remake the decision in this appeal.

Appellant’s evidence
23. We heard oral evidence from the appellant. He adopted both his original witness statement of 8 April 2019 and his updated witness statement dated 5 January 2022. The evidence in his earlier witness statement has been summarised above.
24. In the 2022 witness statement, the appellant said that he was not presently aware of his parents’ location; he had last seen his mother in Sulaymaniyah. His father had first been threatened after the appellant's substantive asylum interview which is why those threats had not been mentioned sooner. Before beginning work for Komal he had worked in the catering industry and on a construction site. Komal had branches in Kirkuk, Duhok, and Sulaimaniyah, but its main headquarters was in Erbil, where Ali Baper, the leader, was located. Infelicities in his interview about whether he worked at the headquarters or not turned on confusion at the asylum interview between ‘headquarters’ and ‘branch’
25. The appellant had answered questions about Komal as best he could at interview. Political parties usually had security guards operating at their offices. His family had been worried about him when he was detained by Komal, but their concerns had been assuaged by his cousin telling them he was working in another city.
26. The cousin was a well-respected and long-serving Komal member who had taken responsibility for the appellant’s actions and had trusted him to return from his brief period of home leave to complete his mission; they were relatives and so had a relationship of trust. The appellant would have been given full training for the assassination mission immediately before carrying it out.
27. The appellant believed he would be arrested and killed by Komal given they had a presence across the whole of Iraq. The cousin and the cousin’s family had the resources to track down the appellant and the appellant’s own family wherever they might go in Iraq. His passport (which covered his wife and children too) had been taken by the agent in Turkey; he had left his CSID and driving licence with his father. Neither the appellant nor his wife had any contact with their families, as both families feared to get in touch due to their own safety concerns.
28. In cross-examination, he said that he had three brothers and three sisters in Iraq, and various cousins; he was not in touch with the cousins due to a marital dispute, and was not in contact with his close family due to the threats they received from the cousin’s family. They had been threatened and told to move home.
29. The appellant had last contacted his father (then in Turkey) shortly after arriving in the UK. He used a public telephone, having obtained his father’s contact details via people the appellant knew in the UK. He had been unable further to contact any family members.
30. It was put to him that Komal were a political party with no history of violence for some decades in the KRI. The appellant denied this - they were targeted by the Americans in 2003 specifically for being a terrorist organisation. Asked whether he could point to evidence of Komal being engaged in violence, he stated there had been an incident which one could see reported on the Rudaw TV channel on YouTube. Komal might well decide to suddenly assassinate a leading PUK figure, having never ceased their terrorist activities. He had produced no evidence of this having never been asked to do so. They were engaged in secret “distraction” activities to undermine the two main parties.
31. The appellant maintained that Komal effectively held powers of arrest and detention, being the next largest party behind the two largest political groups; they had no formal policing role but the power they held was different from that of the more formal institutions. The cousin had been detained by Komal some time after the appellant called his father in Turkey, with a view to pressuring the cousin’s family into exchanging the appellant for him. The appellant had received no subsequent information about, nor contact with, the cousin or his family; he understood that his father was in hiding and preparing to move somewhere else.
32. The appellant’s feared risk was not from the Iraqi authorities, but from Komal, an opposition party: he did not consider that the police could assist him. The cousin’s family could not approach the authorities to have the cousin released because he knew very sensitive information and the family feared its public revelation; if they told the police about the assassination plan, that would reveal the same secret which haunted the appellant. Indeed that very secret had required the appellant's own departure from Iraq, believing as he did that Komal would never give up their interest in him. He risked assassination from their members who were active all over Kurdistan.
33. The appellant asserted that Komal members had been involved in violence in Kurdistan - a man was approached to be a tea-maker for Komal but after doing so he was given high explosives and told to blow up the satellite TV channel Rudaw’s office. There would be no publicly available evidence of an assassination attempt being made against the Major - it was a secret which had never been revealed.
34. Asked if he knew of evidence of Komal planning assassinations in the last decade he said that he was aware of a Fatwa issued by Komal leadership against political figures. An activist called Halabijai had spoken widely via YouTube about this; many other people had received threats and been displaced over the years. One of the Party leaders, Ali Bapir, had spoken publicly of killing his own fifteen-year old brother.
35. The appellant lacked any evidence of working for Komal as he had not had the chance to bring documents with him and had no way of getting them from Iraq. His membership card and mobile phone, alongside his rifle, were taken from him when he was detained.
36. The appellant had not brought his Iraqi identity documents such as his CSID card with him to the UK as he did not need them outside Iraq; identity documents needed to be held in Iraq but when he had to flee the country his passport sufficed for travel purposes. He could not remember the number of his family record book or of his CSID document.
37. Mr Melvin put it to the appellant that he had made up his account. He replied that the Home Office had no evidence that he was not telling the truth. It was dangerous to disbelieve a person’s account of serious problems.
38. The appellant then asked, and was granted, permission to add to his evidence. He recounted an incident in the UK: shortly after his error of law hearing in the Upper Tribunal, the appellant’s family had reported an attempted intrusion at their family home, but the police disbelieved them. Soon afterwards a gang of youths, some with knives, entered their garden, and they called the police; there was a hunt for them using dogs, men were arrested, and the police had apologised to him and his family for not believing their original complaint. This showed the dangers of disbelieving him.
Country guidance: identity documents
39. The country evidence on the availability of CSIDs and INIDs is summarised in the country guidance decision in SMO, KSP & IM (Article 15(c); identity documents) CG Iraq [2019] UKUT 400 (IAC) (20 December 2019). Materially for our purposes the Upper Tribunal held that:
(a) The Civil Status Identity Card (CSID) was of central importance, albeit it was being phased out in favour of the INID system. A replacement CSID might be obtained within the UK through the Iraqi consular facilities here. The most critical information to support such an application would be the volume and page reference of the of the Family Book entry in Iraq. It could reasonably be presumed that most Iraqi citizens would recall that number, given its importance to daily life; in any event, family members might assist in recovering it, particularly those on the father’s side. If a replacement document has not been obtained in the UK, it is likely that the individual will need to personally attend their local Civil Status Affairs office to obtain a replacement CSID, or an INID if that office has upgraded to the new system.
(b) For a person of Kurdish origin possessing a CSID, the journey from Baghdad to the KRI was feasible by land, being affordable and practical. Alternatively a CSID would permit one to board a flight to the KRI. Normally such a returnee would be granted entry to the KRI at the border. Cultural norms are such that it may be presumed that one’s family will accommodate one such as to lead a relatively normal life.
40. SMO was considered on appeal in MA (Iraq) & another v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWCA Civ 1467 (11 October 2021) in which Lady Justice Laing, with whom Lord Justice Underhill and Lord Justice Baker agreed, held inter alia that the focus of the Upper Tribunal’s enquiry should be how an appellant would get a CSID within a reasonable time of his return to Baghdad, and if not, how he could get to the IKR without any documents.
41. The appellant in MA and another, like the appellant in this appeal, admitted to having an identity card and having left it with his family in Iraq. On return, he could contact his family and get his old CSID, or obtain a new one, either by accessing the Civil Status Records in Baghdad, or getting his family members to provide him with the CSID or the page reference he needed for a new one. The appeal has been remitted for remaking by the Upper Tribunal.
42. We have also had regard to the more recent decision of Upper Tribunal Judge Blundell in SA (Removal destination; Iraq; undertakings) Iraq [2022] UKUT 37 (IAC) (15 November 2021). That decision deals principally with whether the respondent can properly undertake not to return a person without a CSID, or argue that if a person could safely be removed voluntarily to the KRI, the Article 3 risk from an enforced removal can be avoided. Both questions were answered in the negative. We do not consider that for our purposes it add significantly to the guidance in SMO.
Country evidence
43. In relation to the activities and reach of Komal, the appellant relied on an article of 29 May 2019 from www.rudaw.net Islamic Party Komal likely to enter KRI opposition, which reported the Kurdish Democratic Party’s (KDP’s) ongoing effort to build a coalition with the other main party in Iraq, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), and the third force, Gorran:
“ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Komal, the Kurdistan parliament’s biggest Islamic bloc, is likely to go into opposition where it can offer “constructive criticism” rather than participate in the new Kurdistan Regional Government (KRI), party leader Ali Bapir has said.
“I do not think taking part in the government is important for us,” the Kurdistan Islamic Group (Komal) leader told Rudaw this week.
The party secured seven seats in the September 30 parliamentary election, becoming the largest Islamic bloc in the Kurdish legislature. However, despite months of government formation talks between the parliament’s three biggest parties, Bapir said there is now too little time for Komal to join negotiations.
“In my opinion, the space is too short to consider whether to participate in the government, but in the end, the last decision is vested in the Komal Leadership Council,” he said.
If Komal enters the opposition, it would offer the government “constructive criticism”.
“The opposition and government are not foes … the opposition must make constructive criticism to adjust mistakes and make it beautiful, not ugly,” Bapir said. “We are doing our best to become a loyal and legitimate opposition to correct the government, if derailed, and thank them for good things if they do.”
The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) emerged from last year’s election as the biggest party, with 45 seats in the 111-seat legislature – but short of an outright majority. It has spent months trying to build a governing coalition with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which secured 21 seats, and the Change Movement (Gorran), which won 12. …The Region’s last government was designed to be “broad-based” – including members of almost every party. However, it quickly disintegrated and became ineffective when Gorran, the KIU, and Komal pulled out. The KDP accused the three of having one foot in the government and one in the opposition. …
The Komal leader criticized the government formation process, arguing the president and prime minister should have been elected before party talks began.
Komal also believes the presidency commands too much power and ought to be a ceremonial role.
“The president should be elected initially and then he should represent the largest bloc for the formation of the government,” Bapir said. “By doing so, the parties would be able to seriously engage in government formation and the government agenda be shown to all.””
44. The parties also relied on various reports from the Home Office in recent times: the August 2017 CPIN on political opinion in the KRI, the February 2019 CPIN on Internal relocation, civil documentation and returns, the November 2018 CPIN on the Security and humanitarian situation, and the US State Department report for 2018.
45. In particular, Mr Melvin directed our attention to the June 2021 Iraq CPIN Opposition to the government in KRI at 11.1.1 and 11.5.1-11.5.3. The appellant does not fear the Iraqi authorities and there is no reference to Komal in that report.

Respondent’s submissions
46. For the respondent, Mr Melvin provided a skeleton argument setting out the respondent’s case: there was no corroborative evidence of the appellant's work for Komal or of that Party’s asserted influence, including its possession of powers of arrest and detention, nor of his relative the cousin’s ongoing detention. The appellant could reasonably be expected to contact family members in Iraq to obtain his CSID, given he had last spoken to them, on his own account, as recently as June 2019.
47. In oral argument, Mr Melvin submitted that it was not credible that the appellant could not contact family members in Iraq via a lawyer or any personal contacts he might have; he could even ask for the help of the police. It was to be presumed that he held his own CSID card or otherwise had easy access to it. Alternatively he could obtain one from the Iraqi Embassy, and there was no reason to think that Komal would have influence over the official apparatus responsible for issuing such documents. There was no evidence of Komal being linked to violence since its split from the IMK in 2001. There was no objective evidence to suggest the recent incident in his UK home’s garden was related to his asylum claim.
48. Mr Melvin asked the Tribunal to dismiss the appeal.
Appellant’s submissions
49. CB Solicitors, who represent the appellant, filed a bundle containing a skeleton argument. After setting out the appellant’s account, they identified four questions for determination at today’s hearing:
(a) Was the appellant involved with Komal;
(b) Is he at risk from Komal;
(c) Are there any feasible options for internal relocation; and
(d) Can the appellant obtain state protection.
50. The arguments under (a) and (b) turn on the credibility of the appellant’s core account. On internal relocation, the skeleton argument relies on the appellant’s lack of a CSID and contends that it would be unduly harsh for him to travel internally to escape the risk from the cousin and from Komal, who would ‘make use of allied resources’ to locate and pursue him. State protection was not available to him because he was a member of an opposition group to the ruling PUK and KDP parties. The claims under Articles 2 and 3 ECHR would stand or fall with the asylum claim.
51. In oral argument, Mr Brooks reminded us that credibility and plausibility should be considered in context: in a country like Iraq, in practice powers of detention were not only exercised by state actors and it was not incredible that Komal might detail people as it was said to have done with the appellant and later with the cousin. There was no absolute requirement for corroboration in asylum claims; an absence of evidence was not evidence of its absence. Mr emphasised two axioms of refugee law: that there is no requirement for corroboration in an asylum claim, and that plausibility should be relied upon with caution.
52. Mr Brooks was unable to identify evidence in the public domain to assist the appellant in his contention that Komal remains a party which will undertake assassinations, detain people unlawfully, and kill or harm those who disagree with them. Much of the respondent’s reasoning as to his credibility related to an assumption as to the appellant's genuineness of political belief; but his own account was that he had joined Komal only after working for them for some time, not down to any strongly motivated convictions.
53. Whether or not it was surprising that the appellant could not remember his CSID card number, this should not infect the approach to the rest of his asylum claim. It was reasonable for him to have given his passport to the agent who conveyed him to the UK. If required to return to his home area to obtain documentation then he would face the very actors of harm who caused his flight in the first place. The Upper Tribunal should allow the appeal.
54. We reserved our decision, which we now give.
Analysis
55. In international protection claims, it is the appellant who bears the burden of proof, albeit to the lower standard of real risk or reasonable degree of likelihood. The fact that the UK police force originally doubted the appellant's claim that his family might be in danger here is very unfortunate; but the fact that officialdom is proven wrong on one occasion does not mean that every contention advanced to other branches of the state and independent judges on appeal must be accepted without cavil.
56. We readily accept that judges determining asylum appeals should not make presumptions as to how individuals will react to particular circumstances abroad, nor be too quick to rule out events as true simply because of their improbability. As to plausibility, Neuberger LJ (as he then was) in HK v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2006] EWCA Civ 1037 warned against rejecting as implausible an account emanating from societies with customs and circumstances very different from those of which the fact-finding tribunal had any experience.
57. As to corroboration, Immigration Rule 339L says that statements unsupported by documentary or other evidence require no corroboration where the case is coherent and plausible in the light of the available specific and general information relevant to the person’s case, including country evidence.
58. We adopt the list of issues in the appellant’s skeleton argument. The respondent in her refusal letter accepted that the appellant was an Iraqi citizen of Kurdish ethnicity, and that he comes from Sulaimaniyah. In addition, we accept to the lower standard that he did work as a security guard at a regional (but not national) Komal headquarters and that as a courtesy to his employers, he may at some time have joined the Party.
59. Bearing all these matters in mind, we proceed to examine what we shall call the ‘Komal risk’ (including the risk of retribution from the cousin or his family) and the ‘CSID risk’ separately.
60. The Komal risk. The appellant's core account of the assassination plot and the risk to him lacks credibility. We do not accept, even to the lower standard, his account of the cousin having forced him to take part in an assassination plot. It is neither credible nor plausible to any standard that Komal would force an unwilling security guard into such a role, when presumably it had much more committed members available. We also have serious doubts about the claim that he would be given family time before being trained for the assassination.
61. The country evidence does record a degree of repression against political demonstrations and their organisers. There has of course been sectarian violence throughout the country over time and there have been many abuses of human rights and international humanitarian law in the course of the armed conflict with ISIS. The Gorran party, in recent times the third force in the Kurdish Regional Government (KRI) according to information cited in the CPIN, has had a volatile relationship with the PUK and KDP.
62. Komal is not documented as involved in political violence since the split from IMIK in the early 2000s. It has a vested interest in the continuation of the status quo in the KRI as a participant in the government relatively recently. Neither the appellant nor Mr Brooks were able to point to country evidence to support the appellant’s contention that Komal now undertakes political assassinations, nor that Komal would impute a political opinion to him for failing to participate in such assassination, however reluctantly.
63. However, there is nothing in the material before us to suggest that Komal would wish now to destabilise the political situation by commissioning a political assassination. The appellant referenced multiple sources, sometimes as we understood it emanating from Rudaw television’s YouTube channel, in the course of his oral evidence which he asserted would corroborate the possibility. But none of that material was provided in the appellant's bundle, despite the inherent credibility of his account having been in issue throughout these lengthy appeal proceedings. Nor has any expert evidence been commissioned to fill this self-evident void in his case.
64. Mr Brooks was unable to identify any country evidence to support the contention that Komal remains a party which will undertake assassinations, detain people unlawfully, and kill or harm those who disagree with them. The article on which the appellant relies is to the contrary effect: Komal is taking the political route and expects to influence the larger parties because of its regional profile. There is simply no country evidence before us that they have, or have planned, any assassinations since 2001.
65. That being the case, we reject both the account of the harm caused to the appellant’s cousin and his family, and the risk from that family, and the wider risk which the appellant claims he fears from Komal itself. We find this part of the account to have been fabricated.
66. The CSID risk. The appellant’s account of his documentary situation is that he left his CSID with his father. We have not accepted that the index events relied upon in Iraq occurred, and on that basis, the flight of the appellant’s family and the rift with his father are also not credible. There is no reason, once his account is rejected, to think that his father or any other family member has any reason to be in hiding or otherwise uncontactable.
67. In that case, the appellant is in the same situation as the appellant in MA and others: either he can ask his father for the CSID he left behind, or someone in his family can tell him the book and page number to get a replacement one. The appellant was able to contact his father even when the latter was in Turkey rather than Iraq, using contacts he knew in the UK. There is no apparent reason why whatever arrangements secured that exchange are no longer extant.
68. In the alternative, we find that he would be able to obtain the information by contacting family members from his extensive extended family in Iraq, all of whom would have the same CSID page and volume references as the appellant: even if (which we reject) they are keeping a low profile, we do not accept that he could not get in touch with them.
69. Returning to the questions posed in the appellant’s skeleton argument, we answer the first question in the affirmative. The appellant was employed by Komal to guard its Sulaimaniyah office and may have joined the Party, out of courtesy to his employers. He was not particularly knowledgeable about the Party or involved with it.
70. The appellant’s claim falls at the second question. The risk from Komal, or his cousin, is not credible, even to the lower standard. The question of internal relocation does not arise, but if it did, we note that even on the appellant’s account, his family members have been able to relocate elsewhere to avoid the alleged harassment of them by Komal and the cousin’s family. We also reject the CSID risk for the reasons we have given.
71. In summary, we conclude that the appellant would not risk persecution entitling him to international protection, or serious harm or inhuman and degrading treatment contrary to Article 3 ECHR due to the lack of a CSID or equivalent document. His family has access to his original CSID (or the information necessary to secure a replacement) and would ensure its availability to him rather than risk him facing otherwise avoidable difficulties en route to the KRI from Baghdad.
72. The appeal must therefore be dismissed.
Decision
For the foregoing reasons, our decision is as follows:
The making of the previous decision involved the making of an error on a point of law. We set aside the previous decision.
We remake the decision by dismissing the appeal.

Signed Date 17 April 2022

Deputy Upper Tribunal Judge Symes