Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER Case No: UI-2024-005944
First-tier Tribunal No: PA/61730/2023
LP/08065/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

On 7th of May 2026

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE CANAVAN

Between

H M
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Ms F. Shaw, instructed by Elder Rahimi Solicitors
For the Respondent: Ms H. Gilmore, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 18 March 2026

Order Regarding Anonymity

Pursuant to rule 14 of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008, is granted anonymity because the case involves a protection claim. No-one shall publish or reveal any information, including the name or address of the appellant, likely to lead members of the public to identify the appellant. Failure to comply with this order could amount to a contempt of court.

DECISION AND REASONS
Summary
1. This is a decision of the Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) (‘the Upper Tribunal’). The Upper Tribunal is an independent decision-making body with powers given to it by an Act of Parliament. This decision is made in the context of the Upper Tribunal’s role in considering statutory appeals from decisions made by the First-tier Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) (‘the First-tier Tribunal’).
2. The appellant appealed a decision made by the respondent to refuse a protection and human rights claim. The appellant lodged an appeal to the First-tier Tribunal under section 82 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 (‘NIAA 2002’). The appeal could be brought on the ground that removal from the United Kingdom would breach the United Kingdom’s obligations under the Refugee Convention or would be unlawful under section 6 of the Human Rights Act 1998 (‘HRA 1998’). The First-tier Tribunal dismissed the appeal in a decision sent on 16 October 2024.
3. The losing party in an appeal before the First-tier Tribunal can apply for permission to appeal to the Upper Tribunal. If permission is granted, the Upper Tribunal will consider the legal arguments put forward by both sides in the appeal. The Upper Tribunal only has power to set aside a decision of the First-tier Tribunal if it concludes that the arguments put forward by the party that applied to appeal show that the decision involved the making of an error of law: see section 12 of the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007 (‘TCEA 2007’).
4. If the Upper Tribunal finds that a decision of the First-tier Tribunal did not involve the making of an error of law, the First-tier Tribunal decision will stand. If a decision of the First-tier Tribunal is found to involve the making of an error of law the Upper Tribunal has power to set aside the decision. The Upper Tribunal will then decide whether it will remake the decision or whether the appeal might need to be reheard in the First-tier Tribunal.
5. In this decision, the Upper Tribunal is only considering whether the First-tier Tribunal decision involved the making of an error of law. At this stage, the Upper Tribunal does not go on to decide whether removal of the appellant would breach obligations under the Refugee Convention or would be unlawful under the HRA 1998.
6. The First-tier Tribunal judge found that the appellant failed to produce sufficient reliable evidence to establish the credibility of his account relating to a blood feud in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). Nor did the judge consider that the appellant had produced sufficient reliable evidence to show that he had protested against the KRI government in the UK, that his activities were likely to have come to the attention of the authorities, or would place him at real risk of serious harm if he returned to the KRI.
7. The Upper Tribunal has concluded that none of the grounds of appeal put forward by the appellant show that the First-tier Tribunal decision involved the making of an error of law that would justify setting aside the decision.
Decision and reasons
8. The appellant applied for permission to appeal to the Upper Tribunal. The grounds, which were not drafted by Ms Shaw, argued that the decision of First-tier Tribunal Judge Rodger (‘the judge’) involved the making of the following errors of law:
(i) The First-tier Tribunal failed to give adequate reasons when rejecting the appellant’s account of a medical issue, which he said resulted from a beating by members of his ex-wife’s family.
(ii) The First-tier Tribunal’s finding that there was insufficient evidence to show that the appellant suffered from the said medical condition failed to apply the correct standard of proof and was irrational.
(iii) The First-tier Tribunal failed to give adequate reasons for rejecting CCTV evidence that was said to show attacks on his family at their home.
(iv) The First-tier Tribunal placed ‘unreasonable reliance’ on minor inconsistencies.
(v) The First-tier Tribunal erred in finding that the appellant’s fear of persecution was not ‘for reasons of’ one of the five Convention Reasons. It is asserted that the blood feud was for reasons for the appellant’s membership of a ‘particular social group’.
(vi) The First-tier Tribunal’s made irrational findings relating to the evidence produced in support of the appellant’s stated activities in the UK.
9. I have considered the First-tier Tribunal decision, the documentation that was before the First-tier Tribunal, the grounds of appeal, and the submissions made at the hearing, before coming to a decision in this appeal. It is not necessary to summarise the oral submissions because they are a matter of record, but I will refer to any relevant arguments in the decision.
10. I bear in mind that judicial caution and restraint is required when considering whether to set aside a decision of a specialist tribunal. In particular, judges of a specialist tribunal are best placed to make factual findings: see HA (Iraq) v SSHD [2022] UKSC 22. Appellate courts should not rush to find misdirections simply because they might have reached a different conclusion on the facts or expressed themselves differently: see AH (Sudan) v SSHD [2007] UKHL 49 and KM v SSHD [2021] EWCA Civ 693. Where a relevant point is not expressly mentioned by the tribunal, the court should be slow to infer that it has not been taken into account: see MA (Somalia) v SSHD [2020] UKSC 49. When it comes to the reasons given by the tribunal, the court should exercise judicial restraint and should not assume that the tribunal misdirected itself just because not every step in its reasoning is fully set out: see R (Jones) v FTT (SEC) [2013] UKSC 19.
Grounds 1-2
11. The first two grounds relate to the issue of whether the appellant had undergone an orchidectomy. The judge found that there was no persuasive medical evidence to support this aspect of the claim. She considered a letter from Dr Abdulhakin at the Sulaymaniyah teaching hospital but gave adequate reasons to explain why she gave it little weight [22]. She also considered some apparent inconsistencies in the evidence given by the appellant [23]. The only evidence from the UK showed that the appellant had been referred to an endocrinology department, but no further detail was given [24]. Those findings were within a range of reasonable responses to the evidence.
12. The question of whether the appellant did or did not have an orchidectomy was only relevant to the appellant’s core claim to be at risk from his ex-wife’s family. He said they assaulted him in 2018. The appellant claimed that the orchidectomy was required due to injuries sustained during the assault.
13. Ultimately, the first two grounds cannot succeed because at the end of [24] the judge made clear that she had considered the issue at its highest. She found that, even if she accepted that he had an orchidectomy, there was insufficient reliable evidence to show a causative link between the claim to have been assaulted and the need for the medical procedure. At highest, Dr Abdulhakim’s letter amounted to one line stating that he ‘got trauma to scrotum attending to Emergency department at 2th July 2018: Bilaterial orchidectomy done.’ It was open to the judge to conclude that even if the appellant did have an orchidectomy, there was insufficient evidence to show that it arose for the reasons he claimed.
Ground 3
14. The third ground made a series of submissions asserting that the judge failed to give adequate reasons for giving little weight to the CCTV evidence. The appellant relied on this evidence to support his claim that his ex-wife’s family made threats at his family home on several occasions in 2018, 2021, and 2022. The judge described the appellant’s evidence on this issue at [25] and then evaluated the footage at [26] of the decision. She noted that there was no evidence to support the appellant’s claim that his sister sent him the footage by WhatsApp. The judge also noted that, although there was a photograph of a burnt out car, given that the incident was said to have taken place outside the father’s property it was surprising that there was no CCTV footage of the incident. There was no documentation to show the licence details of the car or to show that the car shown in the photograph was owned by his father.
15. At the hearing, Ms Shaw argued that the judge made an error of fact in requiring proof of ownership of the car when the photograph showed that no registration was visible. Such evidence would not have made any difference if the car could not be identified. This point was not particularised in the third ground as originally pleaded. Even then it is insufficient to undermine the overall reasoning of the judge. It was open to the judge to conclude that there was little surrounding evidence to link the photograph of the burnt out car with the appellant’s family.
16. The other points made in the third ground amounted to little more than general disagreements with the judge’s evaluation of the evidence. It was open to the judge to find that less weight could be given to the CCTV footage in the absence of a chain of evidence linking it to the appellant’s family.
Grounds 4-5
17. Ms Shaw did not make any oral submissions in relation to the fourth and fifth grounds. The fourth ground merely asserted that it was not open to the judge to rely on ‘minor inconsistencies in the evidence’ but failed to particularise the point in any further detail. It amounted to nothing more than a general disagreement with the judge’s findings.
18. The fifth ground asserted that the judge erred in finding that no Convention Reason was engaged on the facts of the case. It asserted that the situation was ‘akin to a blood feud’ and cited a country guidance decision relating to Albania. The grounds was not particularised beyond these bare assertions and fails to identify any error of law. It was open to the judge to conclude that the appellant had failed to produce sufficient evidence to show that there was a ‘blood feud’ or that he would be at risk on account of ‘family honour’ in a way that was likely to engage the Refugee Convention.
Ground 6
19. The last ground argued that the judge’s finding at [38], relating to the appellant’s claimed political activities in the UK, was irrational. The judge said: ‘There has been no disclosure or screenshots of the appellant’s Facebook account details or evidence of whether his account is open to the public or private and no persuasive evidence provide to satisfy me that the screenshots in the appellant’s bundle are indeed screenshots of the appellant’s Facebook account.’.
20. The written ground merely outlined that evidence was produced in the form of screenshots from the appellant’s Facebook account and asserted that they showed the appellant at a demonstration. The judge was not saying that there were no screenshots. The point the judge was making was that there was no surrounding evidence to show that the print outs in the bundle could be relied upon as evidence to show that they were from a Facebook account likely to be used by the appellant or that it was publicly available: see XX (PJAK, sur place activities, Facebook) [2022] UKUT 00023 (IAC). Although it was said that the appellant’s skeleton argument at [25] invited the respondent and the judge to consider the publicly available account, no link was provided to do so.
21. Ms Shaw submitted that the print outs from the account did consistently provide the appellant’s name and it was clear that the posts in English had been translated. However, nothing in her general submissions on the evidence identified any error of law in the judge’s findings relating to the Facebook evidence. It was open to the judge to find that the evidence was of the kind that the Upper Tribunal in XX considered could only be given ‘limited evidential value’.
22. For the reasons given above, I conclude that the grounds of appeal fail to show that the First-tier Tribunal decision involved the making of a material error on a point of law. The decision shall stand.
Notice of Decision
The First-tier Tribunal decision did not involve the making of an error on a point of law
The decision shall stand

M. Canavan
Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

01 May 2026