Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2025-000158
UI-2025-000457
PA/64586/2023
LP/08385/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

On 10th of July 2025

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE BRUCE

Between

AH (IRAQ)
(anonymity order made)
Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:

For the Appellant: Ms Johnrose, Counsel instructed by Jackson Lees Group Ltd
For the Respondent: Mrs Newton, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Manchester Civil Justice Centre on 17 June 2025

Anonymity

Unless and until a tribunal or court directs otherwise, the Appellant is granted anonymity. No report of these proceedings shall directly or indirectly identify him, any of his witnesses or any member of his family. This direction applies to, amongst others, both the Appellant and the Respondent. Failure to comply with this direction could lead to contempt of court proceedings

DECISION AND REASONS
1. The Appellant is a national of Iraq born in 1999. He appeals with permission against the decision of the First-tier Tribunal to dismiss his appeal on protection and human rights grounds1.
2. Before the First-tier Tribunal the Appellant had three arguments about why he should be granted leave to remain in the UK.
3. The first was that he had a well-founded fear in Iraq for reasons of his imputed political opinion and/or that he faced a real risk of serious harm at the hands of a powerful family there. The Appellant avers that whilst living in Iraqi Kurdistan (IKR) he met and fell in love with a girl, whose hand in marriage he sought from her family. Her family were associated with the PUK; his with the KDP. For this, and possibly other reasons, her family rejected his repeated requests to marry her. Matters escalated so that in March 2021 her father issued threats to kill the Appellant; her stepbrothers assaulted and badly beat him. The Appellant and his girlfriend decided to elope together. They travelled to Erbil and sought the assistance of a women’s shelter, who took them in and interceded on their behalf, trying to persuade the girl’s family to accept the relationship. The family responded by agreeing to the marriage with what the Appellant and his girlfriend quickly realised was an unrealistically low mehr (dower) price: they knew that this was a trap to lure them back to Sulaymaniyah. Fearing that the Appellant, and possibly she too, would be killed for having insulted her family’s ‘honour’, they rejected this offer. The Appellant then turned to the KDP for help. His brother was a martyred peshmerga, and another brother had joined the PKK and was fighting Turkish forces. With this family history the Appellant believed that they might help him. They instead suggested that he too become a peshmerga, with the implicit understanding that only then would he come under their protection. In the meantime, the Appellant’s family were compelled to disown him, due to fear of violence from the girl’s side. The couple left Iraq and spent 3 months in Turkey together before trying to make it to Europe. It was whilst crossing the Mediterranean that they were separated. Although he has sought the assistance of the Red Cross he has not been able to find her. He believes that it is reasonably likely that her family will target him for death/serious harm if he returns to the IKR.
4. The second plank of the Appellant’s case was that since his arrival in the UK he had taken part in a number of protests against the corruption of the KDP and PUK. He has joined an opposition group called DAKOK and now believes that he will also face a risk of harm for that reason.
5. Finally the Appellant avers that he does not have any valid identity documents which would enable him to access basic services in Iraq, or move freely around the country. As such he asserts a right to humanitarian protection.
6. The First-tier Tribunal dismissed the appeal. It did not believe the account of events in Iraq. It accepted that he had been involved in protests in the UK but did not find that these would place him at risk in Iraq. It did not make any express finding about whether or not the Appellant had access to identity documents.
7. The Appellant has permission to appeal on 4 headline grounds, each of which contains multiple points, but I need not address any of these in detail because before me the Secretary of State indicated that she accepted several of the criticisms to be made out, and for that reason has invited me to set the decision of the First-tier Tribunal aside and order a de novo re-hearing of this appeal. These accepted errors are as follows:
i) Mistakes of fact. The decision reads, at its §57 that it was “not credible” that the Appellant would continue to visit the girl’s home after his marriage proposal was rejected; at its §57 it further finds not credible that they would continue to meet each other after her family had rejected him. Neither of these statements is factually correct. It was the Appellant’s evidence that as soon as the first proposal was rejected, he and his girlfriend stopped seeing each other and communicated only by telephone. This was how they arranged to meet and flee together.
ii) Failure to give reasons. In respect of several key aspects of the narrative the decision rejects the evidence without explaining why. At §57 the decision rejects as “not credible” the claim that the Appellant made more than one proposal: no reasons are given why. At §59 the decision states that it is “not credible” that the girl would continue to accept his calls: no reasons are given why.
iii) Failure to have regard to material background material. A strikingly unusual aspect of this account was the detailed narrative about how the couple sought help from a shelter in Erbil, and that the shelter sought to mediate with the aggrieved family. The Tribunal rejects this as implausible, without having regard to country background material before it to the effect that this is precisely what such shelters do: the first thing they do is to try and facilitate reconciliation on behalf of girls estranged from their families.
iv) Failure to make findings on material matters. The decision does not address the question of whether the Appellant’s political activities in this country are motivated by a genuinely held belief, or whether he would seek to continue such activity upon return to Iraq. Nor are any clear findings made on whether it is reasonably likely that the Appellant will, upon return to the IKR, be unable to redocument himself.
8. For these reasons, the parties are in agreement that the decision of the First-tier Tribunal must be set aside in its entirety and remade. I agree.
Decisions
9. The decision of the First-tier Tribunal is set aside.
10. The appeal is remitted to the First-tier Tribunal to be reheard de novo by a judge other than Judge Alis.
11. There is an order for anonymity in this ongoing protection appeal.

Upper Tribunal Judge Bruce
Immigration and Asylum Chamber
4th July 2025