Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case Nos: UI-2024-005506
UI-2024-005508

First-tier Tribunal Nos: PA/55013/2023
PA/58438/2023

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:
13 March 2025

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE KEBEDE
DEPUTY UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE ALIS

Between

AM
FM
(Anonymity Order made)
Appellants

and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Ms Johnrose, instructed by Broudie Jackson Canter Solicitors
For the Respondent: Ms C Newton, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Manchester Civil Justice Centre on 4 March 2025

DECISION AND REASONS

1. The appellants appeal, with permission, against the decision of the First-tier Tribunal dismissing their appeals against the respondent’s decision to refuse their asylum and human rights claims.
2. The appellants are mother and daughter, born on 12 January 1993 and 1 April 2019 respectively. They are citizens of Iraq of Kurdish ethnicity. They left Iraq on 18 April 2021 and arrived in the UK by boat on 30 April 2021. They claimed asylum on arrival, together with the first appellant’s husband and another daughter who were dependent upon their claim. Their claim was refused on 24 July 2023 and they appealed against that decision.
3. For ease of reference, and given that the claim was based upon that of the first appellant, we shall refer to the first appellant as ‘the appellant’.
4. The appellant’s claim is that she fears being the subject of an honour killing by her maternal cousin, A, as a result of rejecting an arranged marriage to him. She claims that her family was indebted to A’s parents as they had supported her and her mother after her father passed away, and that A’s parents wanted her to marry A after she finished school. The appellant claims that she did not want to marry A because he was an alcoholic, and her mother managed to defer the marriage until after she had finished university. She met D at university and they commenced a relationship and wanted to get married after graduating from university. Her mother spoke to her sister who said that it was not possible for her to marry someone else. However, when A was involved in a car accident and suffered brain damage and went to Germany for medical treatment in October 2015, her aunt agreed to release her from the marriage and agreed that she could marry D, as it was not considered that A would recover. The appellant and D were married on 15 April 2016 and D came to live with her family. They had a daughter in 2019. However A made an unexpected recovery and returned to Kurdistan in February 2021 and demanded that she divorce D and marry him. He also made threats through his maternal uncle about her mother’s inheritance of some land from their father, demanding that the land be redistributed. A continued to threaten her and D, and came to the house with three armed men pointing a gun and giving her as week to divorce D and marry him, or else she would lose her daughter. They decided to leave the country because A had influence as he worked for the KDP as a bodyguard. D’s uncle arranged their journey to the UK through France.
5. The respondent rejected the appellant’s account, finding there to be inconsistencies in the evidence and considering that it was lacking in detail and plausibility. The respondent considered that the appellant’s account of A’s family agreeing that she could marry D was inconsistent with her claim to be the subject of an honour crime, and that her account of A being a member of the KDP was inconsistent with the evidence that no one knew what he was and that he was never seen in a uniform. The respondent noted further that the CPIN ‘Iraq: actors of protection’ stated that the KDP did not have power, authority or reach in all areas of Iraq. The respondent considered that the appellant’s failure to claim asylum in France undermined her credibility under section 8 of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants etc.) Act 2004 and did not find that the appellant would be at risk on return to Iraq. The respondent accepted that there would not be sufficient protection from persecution in Iraq and that the appellant could not relocate within her home country if the key material facts of her claim were accepted. However the key material facts were not accepted. The respondent considered that, since the appellant had confirmed that she had a CSID in Iraq and was in contact with her family, she would be able to access her documents to enable her to travel back to her home area. The respondent was not satisfied that the appellant’s removal to Iraq would breach her human rights under Article 3 and 8.
6. The appellants appealed against the respondent’s decision. The appeals were heard by a First-tier Tribunal Judge on 13 August 2024. It was confirmed on behalf of the appellants that there was no Article 8 claim. The appellant and her husband, D, gave oral evidence before the judge. The judge found that the three matters identified by the respondent as inconsistencies were not in fact inconsistencies and that if he accepted the appellant’s account those matters would not undermine her claim. The judge found, however, that the appellant’s failure to claim asylum in France was a matter which carried some weight and that there were other inconsistencies identified in the respondent’s review and the presenting officer’s submissions which damaged the appellant’s credibility. The judge found that the appellant’s account of her husband’s uncle not assisting them further because he feared being associated with her, was inconsistent with her account of him having already assisted their escape and of thus already being associated with them. The judge found that the account given by the appellant at the hearing of her mother being threatened by A contradicted her evidence in her interview that she was the only family member who had been persecuted. The judge also found that the appellant had given inconstant evidence about where her identity documents were and what the smuggler had told them to do with their documents. The judge found the appellant’s evidence to be sufficiently damaged overall that he could not accept that she was at risk of persecution and could not accept her claimed fear to be true. He concluded that the appellant could access her identity documentation through her husband’s uncle. He accordingly dismissed the appeals, in a decision promulgated on 9 September 2024.
7. The appellants sought permission to appeal the judge’s decision on three grounds: firstly, that the judge had erred in her approach to credibility and documentation by relying on post-flight issues which did not impact upon the pre-flight claim; secondly, that the judge had failed to assess and make findings on the appellant’s husband’s evidence; and thirdly, that the judge had made an inadequate assessment of the Article 3 claim relating to documentation.
8. Permission was refused in the First-tier Tribunal, but was then subsequently granted in the Upper Tribunal on the following basis:
“2. The outcome of the appeals turned on the credibility of the Appellants’ claims. It is arguable as asserted at ground one that the Judge erred in dismissing the appeal by relying on issues which arose post-flight when finding the claims about events pre-flight not to be credible. It is arguable that insufficient reasons are given for finding that the Appellants’ claims about what occurred pre-flight were not credible.
3. The second ground has less merit but may overlap with the first ground so I do not limit the grant in that regard.
4. The Judge appears not to accept the Appellants’ account about what happened to their documentation which would suggest that he found that they would be able to access those documents because they would remain in Iraq. It is however arguable that the Judge has failed to make a finding about the Appellants’ ability to be documented for return to Iraq. I therefore grant permission also on ground three.”
9. The matter then came before us for a hearing. Both parties made submissions.
10. Ms Johnrose submitted that, having disagreed with all of the respondent’s reasons for rejecting the appellant’s account, the judge ought, by the respondent’s own reasoning, to have found the appellant a witness of truth and ought not to have rejected the issue of documentation. With regard to the first ground, Ms Johnrose submitted that it was irrational of the judge to have relied on post-flight factors to find the appellant’s claim not credible, when the post-flight factors upon which he relied did not impact on the core claim. By relying upon the documentary issue to find the core claim not credible, the judge had applied the converse approach to that normally applied to the documentation issue. As for the second ground, Ms Johnrose submitted that the judge had materially erred in law by making no findings on the evidence of the appellant’s husband. With regard to the third ground, she submitted that the judge had failed to make any proper assessment, in line with SMO and KSP (Civil status documentation, article 15) (CG)) Iraq [2022] UKUT 110, on the issue of access to identity documentation. Ms Johnrose asked that the case be remitted to the First-tier Tribunal for a fresh hearing.
11. Ms Newton submitted that the judge had made a global credibility assessment and had never made any finding that the appellant’s account was reliable. She submitted further that the judge had made findings on the appellant’s husband’s evidence, and that the judge had made proper findings on the issue of documentation and did not need to go any further.
Analysis
12. We do not find the grounds to be made out. Whilst the judge’s decision could arguably have been better expressed and formulated, it is clear that his adverse credibility finding was based upon a global assessment of the evidence, drawing together various strands of reasoning, as he made clear at [14] and [21].
13. It is not the case, as the grounds suggest, that the judge found the appellant’s core claim based on the pre-flight events to be a reliable one and then went on to rely upon post-fight events to ultimately reject the claim. Such a conclusion is a misreading of the judge’s findings at [13]. What the judge said at [13(a)] and [13(b)] was simply that he gave no weight to specific inconsistencies relied upon by the respondent in the refusal decision. We reject the suggestion made by Ms Johnrose that, having done so, the judge ought then to have approached the case on the basis that there was otherwise no challenge to the credibility of the claim. That was clearly not the case. The respondent, in the refusal decision, also expressed concerns about the lack of detail in the appellant’s evidence, and that was reiterated in the respondent’s review. There were further issues raised by the respondent at the hearing which the judge properly went on to consider.
14. We disagree with Ms Johnrose that the factors relied upon the judge, being post-flight, did not entitle him to reject the core claim. On the contrary, they were matters which the judge was entitled, upon an overall assessment of the evidence, and having had the benefit of hearing oral evidence, to have regard to in concluding that the appellant and her husband were not reliable witnesses. Ms Johnrose submitted that the issue of the threats to the appellant’s mother, referred to at [16] of his decision, related to a land dispute and was an entirely separate matter to the core claim, so that the judge was wrong to have drawn any adverse conclusions in relation to that evidence. However it is clear from the appellant’s response to question 57 of her asylum interview that the matters were intertwined, relating to the account of an incident when A came to her house with armed men leading to the decision to flee the country. Accordingly, it seems to us that it was entirely open to the judge to have regard to inconsistencies in the appellant’s evidence when assessing the credibility of the claim in relation to that account.
15. As for the issue about the appellant’s husband’s uncle, referred to at [15] of the judge’s decision, we consider that the judge was, likewise, entitled to have regard to that matter as part of his overall credibility assessment and we reject the assertion that he erred by taking account of an irrelevant and unrelated matter. That issue was related to the question of family contacts in Iraq and, in turn, the appellant’s ability to access her identity documentation. The appellant’s evidence was that her husband’s uncle would not assist them in accessing their documents as he did not want to be associated with them, a matter which the respondent considered to be inconsistent with the account of him having made all the arrangements for them to leave Iraq. The judge found that to be a material inconsistency in the appellant’s evidence, noting also at [18] the inconsistent evidence as to the last contact with the uncle. Likewise the judge, at [18] and [19] of his decision, found the inconsistency in the appellant’s account about the whereabouts of her identity documents to be a material matter impacting adversely upon her overall credibility. It was Ms Johnrose’s submission that the judge had erred in his approach to those matters, and was wrong to find that the issue of documentation impacted upon the core issue in the appellant’s claim. However that submission misconstrued the context in which the judge took account of the matter. The relevance of the matter was not the ability to access identity documentation but rather the fact that the appellant had given inconsistent evidence in relation to the issue: stating at paragraph 1.8 of her screening interview “I left my passport home in Iraq”, yet later claiming that the smuggler had taken the documents and had told her and her husband that he would send them home; and then giving inconsistent evidence as to how she knew the documents had not been returned home. It seems to us that the judge was perfectly entitled to have regard to the matter and to draw the adverse conclusions that she did when assessing the overall reliability of the appellant and her husband as witnesses of truth.
16. In the circumstances, we agree with Ms Newton that the judge, having undertaken a global assessment of the evidence, was entitled to make the adverse credibility findings that he did in relation to the core claim. We also agree with Ms Newton in rejecting the appellant’s second ground of appeal in relation to the evidence of the appellant’s husband. The judge made specific references to the appellant’s husband’s evidence at [18] and [19] of his decision and it is clear that he took that evidence into account when assessing the credibility of the claim as a whole.
17. As for the final ground relating to the issue of documentation, we consider again that that was properly addressed by the judge and that he was perfectly entitled to conclude, on the basis of the evidence available to him, that the appellant and her husband would be able to access their identity documents in order to enable them to return to their home area. We agree with Ms Newton that, having found that the documents were at the appellant’s home in the KRI and that there were means by which she could access the documents, there was no need for the judge to go further. His findings were consistent with, and in accordance with, the guidance in SMO. Clearly, on the findings made by the judge, the appellant and her family would be able to have the documents sent to them in the UK or could meet her husband’s uncle or other family members on arrival in the KRI and then proceed to the relevant Civil Status Affairs office to register their details and obtain their INID cards. The grounds raise the matter of the appellant’s undocumented baby, but there was no argument presented to the judge, nor evidence produced, suggesting that there would be difficulties arising in that regard once the appellant and her husband had access to their own identity documents.
18. For all these reasons we consider that the grounds have not been made out. The judge was entitled to reject the appellant’s claim on the basis that he did and for the reasons fully and properly given. The decision that he reached was one which was fully and properly open to him on the evidence before him.
Notice of Decision
19. The making of the decision of the First-tier Tribunal did not involve a material error on a point of law requiring it to be set aside. The decision to dismiss the appeal stands.
Anonymity Order
The Anonymity Order previously made is continued.

Signed: S Kebede
Upper Tribunal Judge Kebede

Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

6 March 2025