Tribunal decisions

The decision

Upper Tribunal
(Immigration and Asylum Chamber) Appeal Number: UI-2025-000820
[PA/55522/2023]

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Heard at Field House
Decision and Reasons Promulgated
On 16 April 2025

29th April 2025

Before

Deputy Upper Tribunal Judge MANUELL

Between

J S
(ANONYMITY DIRECTION MADE)
Appellant
and

THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr P Georget, Counsel
(instructed by Malik and Malik Solicitors)
For the Respondent: Ms A Ahmad, Home Office Presenting Officer

DECISION AND REASONS
1. Permission to appeal was granted by Tribunal Judge Barker on 18 February 2025 against the decision to dismiss the Appellant’s asylum and human rights appeal made by First-tier Tribunal Judge Hussain in a decision and reasons dated 12 January 2025.
2. The Appellant, a national of Albania born on 31 January 1995, arrived in the United Kingdom and claimed asylum on 22 September 2022. His application was refused by the Secretary of State for the Home Department on 3 December 2023. The Appellant claimed that he feared harm if he returned to Albania because of a blood feud with the Oruci family. The feud was said to have arisen because the Appellant’s brother Nebi killed Armando Oruci (also known as Godini) in Germany in April 2020.
3. The Appellant’s brother Elez claimed asylum in the United Kingdom, based on the same alleged blood feud. Elez’s appeal against the refusal of his claim was dismissed by Judge Bart-Stewart in a decision promulgated on 19 June 2023. There was no appeal.
4. Judge Hussain provided an extensive summary of Judge Bart-Stewart’s decision. Her findings appeared at [13] onwards of her decision. She recorded that Elez produced documents relating to the murder in Germany on 20 April 2020 and court proceedings relating to his brother Nebi. There was no challenge to the documents. This included a newspaper article relating to the killing which stated that it had taken place in a supermarket car park and an investigation involving Nebi as the aggressor. [14] recalled Elez stating that the incident took place at his brother’s house. The same paragraph also recorded Elez’s answer to the contradiction in the evidence.
5. In [15] the Judge found that the scene of the crime was the middle of a parking lot rather than an entrance to a building. In the same paragraph, the Judge recorded the present Appellant’s evidence about a conversation he had with Nebi whilst in prison. His brother was sentenced to eight years in prison. In [16] the Judge summarised the evidence appearing in a newspaper report which again reiterated that the killing took place in the parking lot of a supermarket. This followed a disagreement about the sale of narcotics. Following a stabbing by the 27 year old defendant, the victim bled to death at the scene.
6. [17] recorded a copy of an arrest warrant for Nebi and recorded also the relationship between him and the victim. Nebi was said to have no known source of income and dealt in narcotics. He had no strong social ties to Germany. Significantly, in [18] Judge Bart-Stewart accepted that Nebi was Elez’s brother, who was involved in the death of a young man named Godini. The issue she said was whether the killing had led to a blood feud playing out in Albania.
7. Judge Hussain concluded his summary of Judge Bart-Stewart’s findings as follows:
“27. While the account is broadly consistent, I find overall the account lacks credibility. The evidence I accept is that the appellant’s brother has a history of violence in Albania where he spent some years in prison. The newspaper article indicates he is involved in drug dealing in Germany. The court documents confirm his involvement. The appellant’s brother was the aggressor. There is no evidence before me of the outcome of the criminal investigation and proceedings however his brother Jashar says that Nebi is serving eight years in prison in Germany. The evidence does not show that there is a reasonable degree of likelihood that the family in Albania have been targeted because of Nebi Selmaji’s criminal activity in Germany.
“28. I do not accept that the appellant is the victim of target in a blood feud. I find that he is not at risk on return to Albania. I find that the respondent was correct to apply Section 8 of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc) Act 2004 to his credibility. The claimed events did not arise while he was in a safe country however he has not given an adequate explanation for the delay in claiming protection when the claimed risk was from 20 April 2020. The issue of sufficiency of protection and internal relocation does not arise.”
8. Judge Hussain continued:
9. “46. Against the findings made by Judge Bart-Stewart above, I am urged in paragraph 9 of the Appellant’s skeleton argument that I should depart from those findings in light of the new evidence. That evidence comprises a warrant of arrest and a full transcript of the German court that convicted and sentenced Nebi. I have carefully considered the submissions in paragraph 9 and find that the presence now of the court judgment has little or no impact on the propriety of the findings made by the previous Judge. Despite not seeing the judgment, the learned Judge does not appear to have rejected the present Appellant’s evidence that Nebi has been sentenced to 8 years in prison. She accepted that Nebi was involved in drugs and found that Godini was killed. Fundamentally, however, the Judge did not accept that as a result of the killing there arose a blood feud. I have sought to summarise above the Judge’s reasons for reaching that conclusion.
10. “47. Like the previous Judge, I find that there is broad agreement in the evidence between the witnesses, however, like her, I conclude that when considered in the round, the evidence does not point to there being an active or indeed any kind of blood feud between the Oruci family and the Appellant’s family. It will be noted that I did not touch on the Appellant’s brother’s wife’s evidence this is because she has found to be lacking in credibility and I see no reason to decide otherwise. Her claim that she was constantly pursued by the Oruci family is inconsistent with the Appellant’s own evidence that minors and female members are not pursued in a blood feud. Quite what the Oruci family had to gain by following her whilst dropping her children to the school remained to be explained.
11. “48. Other than the Appellant and his brother’s assertion that there is a blood feud there is no other evidence to support that claim. In fact, their own claims are so implausible as to be worthy of very little weight. For example, it does not make sense why the Appellant should have been warned in Italy that now that his whereabouts are known he will be killed. If the intention is to exact revenge by killing, then surely the last thing the killer would wish to do is to alert the victim to the danger. The Appellant’s claim that the police soon after Godini’s killing came to warn them of the danger they faced from the blood feud and take no action to protect them is not believable. The Appellant also made vague claims of having reported the threats (however they arose) to the police [but that] was expressed in the vaguest of terms. The Appellant’s own evidence and his brother’s were discrepant in relation to whether in 2013 Nebi was wrongly accused of killing a woman or a man. If that incident was true, then there should not have been any disagreement about that. There was also confusion as to whether news about Nebi killing Godini was conveyed on the telephone or by a visitor. I also could not believe the Appellant’s account that whilst he was in the forest, his sister in Italy made available to him 400 Euros for the journey. He did not explain how, without the benefit of a bank account, he managed to receive the funds from her.
12. “49. Overall, the conclusion to which I have come is that I am in agreement with Judge Bart-Stewart’s finding that there is no evidence of a blood feud between the Oruci family and the Appellant’s. It follows therefore that the Appellant has neither a subjective nor an objective basis for fearing harm in the hands of the Oruci family. In the circumstances, there is no requirement for me to assess the reasonableness of the Appellant’s relocating to another part of his country or seeking internal protection. I also think it unnecessary in light of these findings to resolve the question of whether the Appellant’s claim engages the Refugee Convention.”
13. Judge Hussain went on to dismiss the Appellant’s Article 8 ECHR appeal.
14. Judge Barker’s grant of permission to appeal was in the following terms:
“The Judge arguably failed to apply the principles of Devaseelan, and arguably failed to carry out an assessment of the new evidence provided by the Appellant in support of his appeal. Instead of taking the previous findings as his starting point, and carrying out his own assessment of the new evidence, the Judge appears to have adopted the previous findings without proper consideration of the new evidence. That new evidence included a Court document which provided further evidence on the main issue in the appeal - the existence of a blood feud between the Appellant’s family and another, and Facebook material which supported an assertion that the feud was still ongoing. The Judge arguably failed to understand the significance of this new evidence in relation to the Appellant’s claim, and arguably failed to assess this evidence with the required scrutiny. In the alternative, the Judge arguably failed to provide adequate reasons for his findings.
“In so far as the Appellant’s Article 8 claim is concerned, the Judge arguably failed to carry out the required assessment, and in the alternative, arguably provided inadequate reasons for his findings. Permission to appeal is granted on all grounds.”
15. There was no rule 24 notice from the Respondent.
16. Mr Georget for the Appellant relied on the grounds of appeal. The Appellant’s essential complaint was that the Judge erred in his application of the Devaseelan [2002] UKIAT 702 principles to the previous determination in the appellant’s brother’s case, and that as a result he failed adequately to consider the new evidence or make his own findings on material facts where the new evidence arguably contradicted the previous tribunal’s findings. Accepting that Devaseelan set a high hurdle, and that the relevant previous decision was adverse, this was nevertheless a situation where the Judge had not properly considered the new evidence.
17. The transcript of the German court was significant, especially as to the location of the killing. The Appellant contended that the judgment of the German court showed that the murder had occurred outside his brother’s apartment building, contrary to the previous tribunal’s finding, and that it was the victim who had first approached him. The English translation records, “adjacent to the car park is a small park and the multi-storied flats in Ziegelstraße… where the two defendants…resided”. Counsel submitted that such evidence directly contradicted the previous tribunal’s findings above, and these were material not only to the weight attached to the evidence from the Committee but also to the key finding in both appeals that there was no extant feud between these two families. This established that in fact it had not been a random incident where Nebi attacked someone over drugs but had been in response to an ongoing dispute where these individuals had come looking for him, and that his reaction killing Armando Oruci (Godini) had elevated this dispute into a feud where the Oruci family wanted blood for blood. Judge Hussain’s reasoning was inadequate. The Judge had also failed to deal with the evidence of threats, which was also new material.
18. As to the Appellant’s Article 8 ECHR claim, it was not enough for the Judge simply to have adopted that section of the reasons for refusal letter, in so dismissive a fashion. The error of law appeal should be allowed, the decision set aside and the appeal reheard.
19. Ms Ahmad for the Respondent adopted a previously unannounced and somewhat equivocal position. In short, she submitted that the Judge had erred in the way(s) which had been contended on behalf of the Appellant. Ms Ahmad nevertheless maintained that the Respondent had been right to refuse the Appellant’s asylum claim and that it was not intended to withdraw the decision,
20. The Tribunal reserved its decision, which now follows. The Tribunal rejects the Respondent’s last minute concession which is not binding on the Tribunal merely echoed the submissions made by Mr Georget. There is nothing in the Article 8 ECHR reasons point. According to Mr Georget’s skeleton argument in the First-tier Tribunal, the Article 8 ECHR claim was advanced on the back of the asylum claim, i.e., the alleged blood feud would make it impossible for the Appellant to lead any kind of normal life in Albania. The Appellant had been in the United Kingdom for less than three years. His Article 8 ECHR claim was comprehensively addressed in the reasons for refusal letter, to the extent that there was nothing useful for the Judge to add and nothing he needed to add. It is clear from his decision that the Judge examined the Respondent’s decision with appropriate care and critically at all stages, from the very beginning. This was far from a case where a judge simply accepted the Respondent’s decision at face value.
21. The heart of the Appellant’s claim was his asylum appeal, as Mr Georget recognised. It has to be said that the Appellant started in a weak position, as the cognate claim of his brother had been comprehensively dismissed by First-tier Tribunal Judge Bart-Stewart in her decision promulgated on 19 June 2023. There was no dispute that Judge Bart-Stewart’s decision was Judge Hussain’s starting point. There was no challenge to the accuracy of Judge Hussain’s summary of that decision, rightly in the Tribunal’s view.
22. Mr Georget submitted that there was an important difference between whether Armando Orici had been killed outside Nebi’s home or in an adjacent car park. Judge Hussain found that the new evidence (i.e., the German court papers) showed that the stabbing was in a car park, very much as Judge Bart-Stewart had previously found. Judge Hussain gave sustainable reasons for reaching those findings. They were not reached in isolation, but against an examination of the evidence as a whole. As Judge Hussain explained, there were many deficiencies in the Appellant’s evidence.
23. In the Tribunal’s view, the argument advanced by Mr Georget (there was at least a reasonable degree of likelihood that the 2020 incident in Germany and that death would have sparked an urge for vengeance and retribution from the Oruci family) was tenuous if not specious. It amounted to no more than disagreement with the Judge’s conclusions. The German court documents plainly found that the killing was part of a dispute between narcotics dealers over the extent of their respective territories. The site of the killing is given as the car park. It was open to Judge Hussain to find that the German court documents now available reinforced Judge Bart-Stewart’s conclusions and findings. The German newspaper reports to which she had referred accurately gave the car park as the location of the killing. The contradiction asserted by Mr Georget is non-existent.
24. The Appellant put forward an elaborate story, with various twists and turns, which Judge Hussain carefully set out. There can be no sensible doubt that Judge Hussain examined all the new material (including the Appellant’s claim that he had received recent threats) in detail, for himself. He was entitled to conclude that the documents from the German proceedings added little or nothing, and that they failed to support the Appellant’s claim that he was implicated in a blood feud triggered by the killing of Armando Oruci when examined in the context of the evidence as a whole, with its various deficiencies. Judge Hussain, like Judge Bart-Stewart, found that there was no evidence reaching the standard of reasonable likelihood to show that there was a blood feud.
25. The grant of permission to appeal can best be described as generous. The Tribunal concludes that the Judge’s decision was sufficiently reasoned and demonstrated that all of the evidence put forward by the Appellant or on his behalf had been properly considered. Devaseelan was followed and applied. The Tribunal finds that there was no error of law in Judge Hussain’s decision, so that the onwards appeal must be dismissed.
DECISION
The appeal to the Upper Tribunal is dismissed.
There was no material error of law in the First-tier Tribunal’s decision and reasons, which stands unchanged.

Signed Dated 22 April 2025

R J Manuell
Deputy Upper Tribunal Judge Manuell