Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2022-004602

First-tier Tribunal No: PA/50974/2022

IA/02831/2022

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

1st August 2025
Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE KEBEDE

Between

RS
(Anonymity Order made)
Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr C Holmes, instructed by Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit
For the Respondent: Mr A Tan, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Manchester Civil Justice Centre on 15 July 2025

DECISION AND REASONS
1. This is the re-making of the decision in the appellant’s appeal, following the setting aside of the decision of the First-tier Tribunal which had dismissed the appellant’s appeal on asylum, humanitarian protection and human rights grounds.
2. Following an Order of the Court of Appeal issued on 10 March 2025 setting aside, by consent, a previous decision of the Upper Tribunal dismissing the appellant’s appeal against the respondent’s decision to refuse his asylum and human rights claim, this case has been remitted to the Upper Tribunal for the decision in the appellant’s appeal to be re-made.
3. The background to this case is as follows. The appellant is a national of Iraq of Kurdish ethnicity, born on 10 April 1993 in Dibis District in the Kirkuk Governorate, in northern Iraq. He arrived in the United Kingdom clandestinely on 20 August 2020 and claimed asylum on arrival. His claim was refused on 25 February 2022.
4. The appellant’s claim was that he was at risk on return to Iraq as a result of having informed on a customer in his mobile phone shop whom he believed was a member of ISIS after seeing pictures of the customer with ISIS on the mobile phone he brought in for repairs. The appellant claimed to have reported the matter to the police and assisted the police in having the customer arrested and detained. He claimed that ISIS, upon learning of the assistance he rendered to the police, threatened to kill him and so he fled. He tried to go to Erbil to settle there but was unable to do so as he was told that he required a guarantor which he did not have, so he found an agent to assist him in leaving the country. He left with his wife, whom he had married on 21 March 2020, but they became separated in Turkey on the way to the UK.
5. The respondent, in refusing the appellant’s claim, accepted that he was of Kurdish ethnicity but did not otherwise accept his account of being threatened by ISIS and did not accept that he was at risk on return to Iraq. The respondent considered that there was a sufficiency of protection available to the appellant from the Iraqi authorities. The respondent did not accept the appellant’s claim to have since lost contact with his family and considered that he could seek assistance from his family in Iraq to assist him in re-documenting himself.
6. The appellant appealed against that decision. His appeal was heard by a First-tier Tribunal Judge on 22 July 2022 and was dismissed on 24 July 2022. The judge did not find the appellant’s account of events leading to his departure from Iraq to be credible and considered that he would be at no risk on return to Iraq on any basis.
7. The judge’s decision was, however, set aside in the Upper Tribunal on 22 June 2023 following a hearing on 30 May 2023. The judge’s credibility assessment was found to be flawed and accordingly no findings of fact were preserved by the Upper Tribunal.
8. The decision in the appellant’s appeal was re-made by an Upper Tribunal Judge (UTJ) on 25 September 2024. In that decision, the UTJ did not accept the credibility of the appellant’s claim in regard to events leading to his departure from Iraq and found that, in any event, there was a sufficiency of protection available to him from the police and security forces in his home area or from the peshmerga. With regard to the issue of the appellant’s identity documentation, the UTJ found that the appellant could be returned to Kirkuk international airport. The UTJ noted that the appellant’s evidence had consistently been that his documents were taken from him by the agent in Turkey and that that had not been challenged and he accepted that the appellant was therefore undocumented. However he did not accept that the appellant had lost contact with his family and he considered that the appellant’s family could assist him in re-documenting himself. The UTJ accepted that the appellant could not redocument himself in the UK and accepted that, whilst he could be returned on a ‘laissez passer’ from the Iraqi Embassy in the UK, that document would be taken from him at the airport. He accepted that the appellant would require an INID within Iraq as CSID’s were no longer being issued there. The UTJ, however, concluded that the appellant would be able to confirm his identity at a border or to officials at the airport and would likely be granted a seven-day residency permit enabling him to leave the airport and travel to his home area, where he could attend at his local CSA office to provided biometrics and obtain an INID.
9. The UTJ reached that conclusion on the basis of paragraph 5.1.3 of the Country Policy and Information Note ‘Iraq: Internal relocation, civil documentation and returns’, Version 14.0, October 2023, which relied upon ‘The Inspection Report on Country of Origin information, Iraq and Myanmar (Burma) undertaken by the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration (ICIBI), published June 2023, which in turn quoted from the Iraq country expert Dr Fateh as stating:
“If a failed asylum seeker is returned to Iraq without an ID document, they will be detained at the airport.
a) The returnee will then be interviewed to give some indication of whether they are from their claimed governorate or region (through dialect, accent etc.). From the returnee’s Kurdish or Arabic dialect, the officer will be able to tell whether the returnee is from Iraq or not.
b) At this time, the returnee’s claimed name and address will also be cross referenced against suspect names in possession of the security services.
c) Next, the returnee will be asked to phone their immediate family to bring their ID.
d) If they claim to have no immediate family, the returnee will be asked to contact a paternal uncle or cousin for their ID.
e) If this is negative too, another relative will come to the airport with their own IDs to act as a guarantor for the returnee. This would allow the returnee a seven-day residency permit pending proof of identity.
f) During this period, the returnee needs to obtain their own ID or provide evidence that they are in the process of obtaining an ID – such as a letter from the nationality department to show that their ID is pending via the usual procedure.
g) If the returnee has no such luck, they must find a local Mukhtar [local chief or village elder] by the seventh day who can provide a letter in exchange for a small fee which states that the person is who they say that they are, that they are from the claimed neighbourhood, and that they are in the process of obtaining an ID.
h) If the Mukhtar cannot identify the returnee, they will need two witnesses to come forward who know them and can provide evidence on their identity.
i) The returnee then needs to apply in writing to the nationality department. Here, they will be interviewed by the chief and the witnesses will ned [sic] to give evidence under oath, stating how they know the returnee.
j) Once the chief has been convinced, the process of obtaining the ID will start. Once these steps have been completed, the returnee needs to communicate back to the security services at the airport, or their guarantor will face legal consequences.”
10. The UTJ found that the appellant would be able to pass through any checkpoints, which were manned by local police, with his residence permit/ security pass and could return to his home area where he would not be at any risk. He accordingly dismissed the appeal.
11. The appellant sought permission to appeal that decision to the Court of Appeal. Permission was refused by the Upper Tribunal, but on an application made directly to the Court of Appeal, permission was granted on 14 January 2025 and, by consent, in an order of 10 March 2025, the UTJ’s decision was set aside and the case was remitted back to the Upper Tribunal for reconsideration, on the following basis:
“10. Within the ICIBI Report, on p 40, the quote from Dr Fatah is dated June 2020. It therefore predated SMO2, which was heard on 4 and 5 October 2021. The statement was also discussed in SMO2: at §100, where the UT declined to find that the airport identification process in Erbil generated identity documentation enabling internal travel, so as to avoid the real risk of article 3 harm arising from internal travel without a CSID or INID. §100 of SMO2 states:
“100. In frank recognition of these difficulties, the respondent relied on Dr Fatah’s evidence that he had learned of the authorities at Erbil airport issuing something which he had heard described as a ‘do not interfere’ letter. In his report, he stated that the document indicated that the returnee had been through an official investigation process and that they were free to resettle in Iraq. The document was valid for a certain period of time until Iraqi documentation had been obtained. Mr Thomann asked Dr Fatah a number of questions about this, in answer to which he emphasised that what he had been told was specific to Kurdistan and that he had never heard of a comparable process in government-controlled Iraq. Nor, it seems, have any of the international actors on the ground in Baghdad. In the circumstances, we decline to draw any inference from the process which Dr Fatah described in Erbil. If there was such a thing as a supporting letter which was issued at Baghdad International Airport to those without acceptable documentation, we consider that a specimen of that document would have been provided and that we would have been told something about those who have previously relied on it for onward travel. As it stands, we have no specimen and the only evidence of this document existing in government-controlled Iraq is from the Iraqi authorities themselves. There is, in sum, no cogent evidence which justifies departure from the conclusions we reached in our first decision.”
11. The Judge was aware that his reliance on the Dr Fatah quote represented a departure from the country guidance, stating at §44: “I accept the CPIN is not country guidance and that a country guidance decision must be followed unless there is good reason to depart from it on the available evidence, but the opinion of Dr Fatah deserves proper weight being given to it”.
12. In treating the Dr Fatah quote as sufficient basis for departure from the country guidance, the Judge therefore erred, first, because it did not in fact provide that basis. In particular:
(1) The Judge appeared to think that, because the CPIN postdated SMO2, the Dr Fatah quote provided justification for departure from SMO2. As stated, the Dr Fatah quote long predated SMO2 and, more importantly, had been considered in SMO2 and found not to support the conclusion that the Judge drew from it.
(2) The quote in the CPIN at §5.1.3 was contained in the “Country information” section of the CPIN. This is a collation of the underlying country evidence, as distinct from the information in the ‘Assessment’ section of the CPIN, where the relevant country guidance is synthesised for caseworkers. Within the Assessment section of the CPIN, the CPIN states, consistently with SMO2, and contradicting the finding of the Judge based on the quote at §5.1.3, that: “those who return to Iraq or the KRI without a CSID or INID, cannot obtain one via a family member on arrival and who would be required to travel internally to a CSA office”: CPIN, §3.6.7.
13. Secondly, the Judge did not identify the country guidance from which he was seeking to depart, namely SMO2, §114(12)-(13), which requires in-person attendance at the returnee’s local CSA office, in order to obtain an INID.
14. Thirdly, “good reason” is not the test for departure from country guidance. The test is “very strong grounds, supported by cogent evidence”: R (SG (Iraq)) v SSHD [2013] 1 WLR 41 (CA), at §47.
15. For these reasons, the Judge’s decision was wrong and should be set aside.
16. Whilst the Judge’s overall conclusion was vitiated by the foregoing error on the issue of redocumentation, that error does not infect the Judge’s findings on the separate issue of whether the Appellant faces a real risk in his home area for the reason he claims relating to the telephone, the photograph, and ISIS (§52), including as to knowledge of his return (§29) and the sufficiency of protection (§48). Accordingly, whilst the Judge’s overall decision should be set aside, the reconsideration should be confined to the redocumentation issue. “
12. The Court directed that “the reconsideration shall be confined to the issue of whether the Appellant faces real risk of article 3 ECHR harm due to his currently not possessing Iraqi civil status documentation, applying SMO & KSP (Civil status documentation; article 15) Iraq CG [2022] UKUT 00110 (IAC), §144(11)-(22). The Upper Tribunal’s findings on the Appellant’s claim to face real risk relating to the telephone, the photograph, and ISIS (§52), and on the sufficiency of protection against that risk (§48), are preserved.”
Re-making of the appeal in the Upper Tribunal
13. The appeal then came before me on 15 July 2025.
14. Mr Tan wanted to cross-examine the appellant and Mr Holmes therefore tendered him for cross-examination after the appellant adopted his most recent witness statement of 26 June 2025 as his evidence for the appeal. The appellant gave his evidence through an interpreter in the Kurdish Sorani language. In response to Mr Tan’s questions, the appellant confirmed that he married his wife in March 2020 and left Iraq in August 2020, and that he registered his marriage with the authorities after the religious marriage. Mr Tan directed the appellant to his witness statement of 26 June 2025 where he referred to his CSID having been issued to his parents when he was an infant, and asked him if that was the only ID card he had had issued to him. The appellant said that it was and that it was the same CSID that he used when he left Iraq. When asked how he could use an ID which had a picture of him as a child, the appellant said that he had renewed the CSID in 2015 with a new photograph and his old CSID was taken by the authorities. The appellant said that he did not get a new CSID after he got married because the paperwork took too long due to all the bureaucracy. Mr Holmes did not seek to re-examine the appellant.
15. Both parties made submissions.
16. Mr Tan relied on paragraph 6.7.2 of the CPIN ‘Iraq: Internal relocation, civil documentation and returns’, for October 2023 which referred to the roll-out of the INID beginning in 2015. He relied upon [363] of SMO, KSP & IM (Article 15(c); identity documents) CG Iraq [2019] UKUT 400 (SMO1) which referred to applications for an INID being required when a person married, and upon [431] which referred to it being likely that Kirkuk had an INID terminal at that time. He submitted that the appellant was married in March 2020 and did not leave Iraq until August 2020. His account was therefore inconsistent with the background information on documentation. Mr Tan submitted that the appellant’s account of not renewing his CSID after 2015 should be rejected, and it was likely that he was issued an INID when he married in 2020. He referred to the appellant’s evidence at question 46 of his interview, that he could not recall his ID number as it was a long one, and submitted that that was consistent with the evidence in the CPIN at paragraph 6.7.5 that INIDs had 12 digits. If the appellant had an INID, he could obtain a new document through the Iraqi Embassy in London, in accordance with the process set out at paragraph 6.7.9 of the CPIN. Mr Tan accepted that if I was against him on that argument, the appeal stood to be allowed as the appellant could not obtain a new CSID or an INID in the UK without having previously obtained an INID in Iraq.
17. Mr Holmes submitted that the respondent’s case rested exclusively on the appellant having an INID, yet it had never been put to him that he had an INID. There was no evidence to suggest that he had an INID in Iraq. The appellant had only ever spoken of having a CSID which he said had been taken by the agent. His evidence had always been consistent in that regard. Mr Holmes submitted that in any event, even if the appellant had an INID, the passage relied upon by Mr Tan 6.7.9 of the CPIN was a departure from the country guidance in SMO2 and was not strong enough evidence to justify a departure from the country guidance.
Analysis
18. The sole issue for determination in this case, following the remittal from the Court of Appeal, is whether the appellant would be at risk on return to Iraq on the basis of a lack of identity documentation. The UTJ’s adverse findings on the appellant’s account of events leading him to leave Iraq have been preserved. So too is the UTJ’s finding that the appellant is currently undocumented, having had his documents taken from him by the agent in Turkey. It is not in dispute that, in accordance with the country guidance in SMO2, the appellant could not obtain a replacement CSID in the UK. Neither is it in dispute that, irrespective of having contact with family members in Iraq, the appellant could not obtain a replacement CSID, his original document having been lost. The decision of the UTJ that he could obtain a document with the assistance of his family has been overturned by the Court of Appeal on the grounds that it was based upon the evidence of Dr Fatah which pre-dated SMO2 and which had not been followed in SMO2. It was also not in dispute that without a CSID or INID the appellant would not be able to travel from the airport to his home area without a risk of harm giving rise to a breach of Article 3. It was on that basis that Mr Tan accepted that, in accordance with the country guidance, if it was found that the appellant had never been issued with an INID, but only a CSID, his appeal fell to be allowed on the documentation issue, on Article 3 grounds.
19. It was Mr Tan’s submission, however, that the appellant did in fact have an INID and that any claim not to have one was contrary to the country information and guidance, in the CPIN and SMO1 as referred to above in his submissions, given that he would have had to apply for one after being married. I have to agree with Mr Holmes, however, that such a suggestion is speculative and has not been put to the appellant or raised at any point throughout the protracted history of this case. At his interview the appellant referred simply to a national ID but did not specify whether that was a CSID or an INID and neither was he asked to be more specific. Whilst, as Mr Tan submitted, the appellant’s evidence at question 46 of his asylum interview about his ID card having a long number could be taken to mean that it was an INID, it seems to me that that is simply too tenuous a conclusion to reach in the absence of any clarification at the interview. The nature of the document was never questioned by the respondent or the Tribunal and it seems that it was always assumed that it was an CSID. Certainly that was the respondent’s assumption, as mentioned at [37] of the refusal decision. It may be that no clarification was sought earlier because the currently known implications of the appellant having an INID rather than a CSID were not fully appreciated, but nevertheless that is not sufficient to now assume the card was an INID.
20. The appellant has since stated in his statement of 26 June 2025 for this appeal, at [6], that he had only ever held a CSID. It was Mr Tan’s submission that that evidence should not be accepted as credible, as the appellant’s evidence in that regard at the hearing was inconsistent. The appellant initially, at the hearing, maintained that he had only had the one CSID card which was issued to him as a child. It was only when Mr Tan suggested that it would be difficult for him to use a CSID which had a photograph of him as a child that the appellant stated that he had updated his CSID in 2015 and that the authorities would have retained and destroyed the old copy. I agree with Mr Tan that the appellant’s contradictory evidence raises some concerns about the reliability of his account. However, the point was never put to the appellant to explain and he was never asked whether he had in fact obtained an INID when married. I do not consider that sufficient to reach a conclusion that the appellant had in fact already obtained an INID.
21. In so far as Mr Tan has relied upon information in the CPIN and the guidance in SMO1 to assert that the appellant must have obtained an INID, it seems to me that it is not sufficiently clear from that evidence that the relevant CSA terminal for the appellant in Kirkuk governate had yet rolled out the INID. No evidence was produced by the respondent in that regard. Mr Tan relied upon [431] of SMO1, but that stated no more than that it was likely that the CSA office in Kirkuk had an INID terminal. The observation was made in the context of the appellant being unable to obtain a replacement CSID at the CSA office in Kirkuk. As for the reference in the CPIN at 6.7.2 to INID cards, upon which Mr Tan relied, that referred to the issuing of INIDs starting in 2015 but did not say anywhere that that included Kirkuk.
22. In the circumstances, applying the lower standard of proof, I accept that the only ID card held by the appellant was a CSID and that, accordingly, he would not be able to redocument himself prior to, or on return to Iraq without putting himself at risk on his journey back to his local CSA office.
23. Mr Tan accepted that, in such circumstances, the appeal stood to be allowed and I therefore allow it on Article 3 grounds, on the basis that the appellant would be at risk on return to Iraq as an undocumented returnee in accordance with the guidance in SMO2.
DECISION
24. The making of the decision of the First-tier Tribunal involved an error on a point of law and has been set aside. I re-make the decision by allowing the appeal on Article 3 human rights grounds.

Signed: S Kebede
Upper Tribunal Judge Kebede

Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

21 July 2025