Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER Case No: UI-2025-000255
First-tier Tribunal No: PA/01459/2025

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

On 19th of June 2026

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE LANE

Between

RNM
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

Secretary of State for the Home Department
Respondent

Representation:

For the Appellant: Mr Ramin
For the Respondent: Mr Tan, Senior Presenting Officer

Heard at Manchester Civil Justice Centre on 5 June 2026

Order Regarding Anonymity

Pursuant to rule 14 of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008, the appellant is granted anonymity.

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

1. The appellant is a female citizen of Cameroon. Her claim for international protection was refused by the Secretary of State by a decision dated 24 March 2025. She appealed to the First-tier Tribunal which, in a decision promulgated on 22 September 2025, dismissed her appeal. The appellant now appeals to the Upper Tribunal.

2. Permission to appeal was granted on Ground 2 only which reads as follows: ‘The FTT relied on perceived defects in the search and arrest warrants (chronology, occupational description, sequencing). The Judge acknowledged that many of these points had not been put to the Appellant in cross-examination, yet treated them as central to credibility. This was procedurally unfair, contrary to [Nwaigwe (adjournment: fairness) [2014] UKUT 00418 (IAC)]. The credibility findings are therefore unsafe.’ The judge had found the appellant’s narrative ‘entirely implausible on all fronts.’ [60].

3. In Nwaigwe, the Upper Tribunal held that ‘where an adjournment refusal is challenged on fairness grounds, it is important to recognise that the question for the Upper Tribunal is not whether the FtT acted reasonably. Rather, the test to be applied is that of fairness: was there any deprivation of the affected party’s right to a fair hearing?’ In the instant appeal, no adjournment was sought but the appellant asserts that she was deprived of a fair hearing of her appeal.

4. The initial hearing proceeded by way of submissions only. I have had regard to the submissions of Mr Ramin and Mr Tan, who appeared respectively for the appellant and the Secretary of State, in determining this appeal.

5. The appellant claims to fear both the government in Cameroon and separatists who had destroyed the appellant’s mother’s house in 2019.

6. The First-tier Tribunal judge begins his very detailed analysis of the evidence at [22] by observing that: ‘some doubts arise from the documents themselves. I make it plain that, because many of the concerns I am about to discuss were not directly put to the Appellant much less weight has been applied to them than would have otherwise been the case. That said, nor can I simply ignore such matters entirely.’ What follows is a careful, even-handed and fair consideration of the oral and documentary evidence. The judge repeatedly reminds himself of the need to attribute appropriate weight to particular items of evidence and then to assess the evidence as a totality.

7. As regards the claimed risk to the appellant from the state authorities, the judge concludes at [48]:

Addressing risk from the government, l do not believe the Appellant’s account There are too many inconsistencies, unexplained elements to believe on any standard what she claims to have happened is true. I recognise some aspects - principally having helped wounded separatists some years ago - were raised from the beginning of the claim. That has not been ignored. Nevertheless, what I find to be a multitude of problems with the narrative completely overwhelm any positive effect that might have. I reject claims the Appellant ever did help separatists that as a result warrants were issued for her of any sort.

8. The judge noted [24] that an arrest warrant upon which the appellant relied described her as a nurse, an occupation she had never had. There follows a discussion of the chronology of the arrest and search warrants which the appellant claims were served on her. The respondent had first put the appellant on notice of the inconsistencies in that chronology in the refusal letter and the appellant (upon whom rests the burden of proof) should have been prepared to come to court to give an explanation. The failure of the appellant to provide an adequate explanation led the judge at [27-28] to conclude that appellant had given evidence about the warrants which was not credible; the appellant had given two incompatible accounts and, as the judge noted, ‘both versions cannot be correct’ [28]. It is clear that that finding did not result from matters which the appellant had been given no opportunity to explain. On the contrary, the appellant had been aware from the refusal of her claim that she needed to explain discrepancies in her evidence but, despite being given the opportunity, had failed to do so.

9. Likewise at [29-30], the judge noted that the way in which the appellant had obtained copies of the warrants had changed during the course of her claim for asylum. The inconsistencies in the evidence were put directly to the appellant at the First-tier Tribunal hearing by the presenting officer and the appellant ‘was unable to answer’ [31]. These are, in my opinion, all matters which (i) the judge legitimately found undermined the appellant’s credibility (ii) did not constitute an ‘ambush’ of the appellant or had occurred to the judge after the hearing (thereby denying the appellant to explain) but were at the core of her claim, had already been raised by the respondent and, even when not raised by the respondent, were so obvious that the appellant should have been expected to come to court to explain them. If anything, when considering parts of the evidence which fall into (ii), the judge has been over-cautious by attaching less weight to inconsistencies in the appellant’s various accounts than was warranted. The laudable care and fairness with which the judge has considered the appellant’s evidence is a particularly striking feature of his decision.

10. Similar considerations apply to the judge’s analysis of the appellant’s claimed risk from separatists. At [55] the judge writes:

Even notwithstanding the considerable concerns set out in relation to fear of the government, I do not believe the Appellant's account on this subject. The external evidence provides some support. That, however, can only go so far. Nothing is quoted to show simply being a teacher is enough to generate a risk of persecution. Detracting from that is what I find to be a fundamental conflict around fleeing the mother’s house due to a fire attack which had yet to take place. There is little sense in that. Any reference to problems before than in interview was vague and without detail. Nothing specific is described as happening since the arson attack. That was three or four years before the Appellant left Cameroon. If one then adds in the doubts relating to claimed fear of the government, the entire narrative becomes wholly unbelievable.

11. The reasons the judge cites for not believing the appellant’s account are in relation to matters at the core of her claim and which she should have come to court prepared to explain. Moreover, even if one were to attach no weight at all to those matters which the judge considered had not been put to the appellant directly (and to which, scrupulously following his own direction, he attaches limited, if any, weight), there are sufficient problems in the appellant’s evidence to render her account internally inconsistent and at variance with relevant country material. Given the serious problems with the appellant’s core account and given also the very limited weight attributed to many other discrepancies in the evidence, it is, in my opinion, not arguable that the judge’s conclusions have been ‘infected’ by any errors in his credibility assessment. I find that the First-tier Tribunal has not fallen into legal error for the reasons asserted in Ground 2 or at all. Accordingly, the appeal is dismissed.

Notice of Decision

The appeal is dismissed.

C. N. Lane

Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

Dated: 9 June 2026