Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2025-000737
First-tier Tribunal No: PA/51074/2024
LP/09326/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

On 10th of December 2025

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE LANE

Between

AS
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

Secretary of State for the Home Department
Respondent

Representation:

For the Appellant: Mr Malik
For the Respondent: Dr Ibisi, Senior Presenting Officer

Heard at Manchester Civil Justice Centre on 29 August 2025

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, a Kurdish male citizen of Iraq, appealed to the First-tier Tribunal against a decision of the Secretary of State dated 11 January 2024 refusing him international protection. The First-tier Tribunal dismissed his appeal and the appellant appealed to the Upper Tribunal. The Upper Tribunal (Deputy Upper Tribunal Judge Deakin) allowed the appeal and directed a resumed hearing in the Upper Tribunal. That hearing took place before me at Manchester on 29 August 2025.

2. The Deputy Upper Tribunal Judge summarised the appellant’s claim at [5]:

5. AS’ substantive asylum interview took place on 18 December 2023. In that interview AS stated that the Civil Status Affairs office closest to where he lived was in Sulaymaniyah, a 15/20 minute drive by car (questions 18-19). AS claimed that he met the woman with whom he had a relationship at a friend’s house on a number of occasions (question 33). She was engaged to a man from a rich family who belonged to the Jaff Tribe. AS claimed he began a relationship with this woman and that they were encountered by the woman’s fiancé (question 41) who stabbed them both. The woman was killed (question 45). AS was wounded but managed to escape by taxi. The following morning a number of men came to his home to find him. They broke his father’s hand (question 46).

3. To succeed in an appeal on asylum grounds, an appellant must show a well-founded fear of persecution for a Convention reason (race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, political opinion). To succeed on an appeal on humanitarian protection grounds an appellant must show a real risk of serious harm at the date of the hearing. The burden of proof rests on an appellant. The standard of proof is a reasonable degree of likelihood.

4. Deputy Upper Tribunal Judge Deakin considered that the First-tier Tribunal’s ‘brief consideration of risk on return was [in]sufficient in light of SMO & KSP (Civil status documentation; article 15) Iraq CG [2022] UKUT 110 (IAC)’.’

5. It is necessary to clarify one issue in the Deputy Upper Tribunal Judge’s decision at [25]; Dr Ibisi told me that the appellant would be returned not to Baghdad but to Sulaymaniyah.

6. The judge found that the First-tier Tribunal had not addressed ‘when [the appellant’s] family would be able to provide AS with his CSID (assuming it was they who were in possession of it) [28].

7. At [32] the judge wrote:

32. However, as they were argued, I record that – if AS had had permission to rely on these grounds, I would have found that they disclosed no error of law.

a. At para. 18 the Judge’s core finding was that there were “significant discrepancies in the appellant's account between the various stages of consideration” and he then went on to provide examples of these discrepancies. There was no requirement for him to go on to make findings resolving the discrepancies.

b. b. As for the medical photographs, the Judge was careful to note that he had no medical experience and to recognise the potential for medical procedures to be approached differently in different countries, but – in spite of those caveats – the Judge was unable to accept that these photos depicted a procedure relating to a stab wound to AS’ hand and so found that the photographs undermined AS’s account. The photographic evidence plainly depicts major surgery to AS’s abdomen. No special expertise is required to recognise this. In my view the Judge was entitled to come to the conclusions that he did.

8. I heard oral evidence from the appellant. He said that his uncle in Iraq could not send him his CSID identity document because ‘he is not on social media.’ The appellant had no contact with his family because he ‘did not want to cause them trouble’ on account of the honour crime involving the dead woman.

9. I note the preserved findings of the First-tier Tribunal (see [4] above). I find that the photographs of the appellant’s alleged injuries do not support his account for the reasons given by the First-tier Tribunal. As Dr Ibisi, submitted there is nothing whatever in the evidence which links the appellant’s account to the photographs. Mr Malik urged me to revisit the First-tier Tribunal’s findings but I declined to do so in the light of the Deputy Upper Tribunal Judge’s observations quoted above. The appellant’s attempt to pass off photographs of a surgical procedure as evidence of an assault very significantly undermines the credibility of his evidence.

10. Mr Malik argued that the photographs showed a pharmacy (where the appellant had been treated after the alleged attack) and not a hospital but the difference is immaterial. Like the First-tier Tribunal judge, I have no medical qualifications but the photographs are sufficiently clear that I take judicial knowledge that they show a surgical procedure and not a wound to the appellant’s hand.

11. I also find the appellant’s account of his escape after the alleged attack wholly implausible. Had his injuries been as severe as he claims the photographs indicate, I simply do not believe that he would have managed to escape by taxi as he claims.

12. Assessing the evidence as a totality, including the preserved findings of the First-tier Tribunal, I find that the appellant is a Kurdish male who has never been involved with a woman in Iraq as described in his account or at all and that he was never the victim of an attack in which the woman died and the appellant himself injured. For the avoidance of any doubt, I find that the entirety of the appellant’s account is false. Accordingly, I do not believe that the appellant has lost contact with his family or that his uncle cannot contact the appellant in the United Kingdom via social media or otherwise. I find that the appellant has lied about this aspect of his current circumstances in order to claim that his family cannot send his CSID from Iraq to the appellant in the United Kingdom. I expressly find that his family can and, before the appellant is returned to Iraq, will do exactly that. Applying the guidance of SMO & KSP (Civil status documentation; article 15) Iraq CG [2022] UKUT 110 (IAC), I find that the appellant will be able to access his home area safely and, because he has a valid identity document, live reside there thereafter without difficulty or hardship. It follows that I should remake the decision dismissing the appellant’s appeal against the decision of the Secretary of State refusing his acclaim for international protection.

Notice of Decision

I have remade the decision. The appellant’s appeal against the decision of the Secretary of State dated 11 January 2024 is dismissed.

C. N. Lane

Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

Dated: 2 November 2025