Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2025-001238

First-tier Tribunal Nos: PA/54676/2023

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:
On 10 November 2025

Before

DEPUTY UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE ZUCKER

Between

IAK (Iraq)
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

The Secretary of State for the Home Department
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr S Winter of Counsel instructed by McGlashan MacKay Solicitors
For the Respondent: Ms L Clewley, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 30 October 2025

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 citizen of Iraq. He is 23 years of age. He arrived in the United Kingdom on 9 December 2019, by small boat from France, having travelled through a number of European countries. He claimed international protection as a refugee that same day.
2. On 21 July 2023 a decision was made to refuse the application. The Appellant appealed to the First tier Tribunal. The appeal was heard at Glasgow on 13 January 2025. Put in issue, on the basis of humanitarian protection only, it having been conceded on the Appellant’s behalf that there was no Refugee Convention reason, were the following.
Will the appellant be:
(a) at risk upon return to Iraq from his father?
(b) able to re-document on return to Iraq?
Summary Basis of Claim
3. The Appellant was born and lived in, Rania, Sulaymaniyah. He is of Kurdish ethnicity. His father was physically abusive towards him and gave him multiple injuries. His father was a drug dealer with connections to the Government as such he has never been arrested for dealing drugs. After the last incident, the Appellant fled to his uncle’s house in Rania, Sulaymaniyah. That uncle introduced the Appellant to his friend who helped the Appellant leave the country. The Appellant’s father nearly found the Appellant in Turkey. The Appellant fears that if returned to Iraq, his father will find him and kill him because he ran away from his father.
First tier Decisions
4. In a decision promulgated on 18 January 2025 the appeal was dismissed on all grounds.
5. Not content with that decision the Appellant made application for permission to appeal to the Upper Tribunal. In essence there were three grounds:
(i) It was irrational for the Judge to find that the Appellant would be able to obtain his CSID, with his uncle acting as intermediary with the Appellant’s father, when it is the Appellant’s father whom the First tier Tribunal had accepted had physically abused the Appellant.
(ii) The First-tier Tribunal erred in in finding that the Appellant could obtain an INID from the Iraqi embassy in London with being able to produce his CSID.
(iii) The First-tier Tribunal erred by failing to apply SMO & KSP (civil status documentation; article 15) Iraq CG [2022] UKUT 00110 which supports a finding that if a person does not have a CSID that person is at real risk when travelling in Kurdistan. Further failing to take account of the same supported in the Respondent’s CPIN.
6. On 13 March 2025 the First-tier Tribunal gave permission to appeal on all grounds thus the matter came before me.
Upper Tribunal Hearing.
7. It was common ground that if the first ground of appeal failed then the other grounds would fail also. It is trite law to observe that an appellate jurisdiction will be slow to interfere with a finding of fact. Mr Winter placed before me the case of Wordie Property Co Ltd v SSHD for Scotland (1983) SLT 345. This was a planning case. The test pointed to was whether there was a “real and substantial doubt as to what the reasons for the Secretary of State’s decisions were and as to what matters he did or did not take into account…”
8. Practitioners in this jurisdiction i.e. immigration and asylum, will be familiar with later authorities that have given guidance on when it is appropriate for an appellate jurisdiction to interfere with or set aside a decision based upon a challenge to a finding of fact. Below are just a few:
Volpi v Volpi [2002] EWCA Civ 464 [2022] Lewison LJ [2] (ii)
“The adverb "plainly" does not refer to the degree of confidence felt by the appeal court that it would not have reached the same conclusion as the trial judge. It does not matter, with whatever degree of certainty, that the appeal court considers that it would have reached a different conclusion. What matters is whether the decision under appeal is one that no reasonable judge could have reached”.

HA (Iraq) (Respondent) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Appellant) [2022] UKSC 22
72. It is well established that judicial caution and restraint is required when considering whether to set aside a decision of a specialist fact finding tribunal. In particular:
(i) They alone are the judges of facts. Their decision should be respected unless it is quite clear that they have misdirected themselves in law. It is probable that in understanding and applying the law in their specialised field the tribunal will have got it right. Appellate courts should not rush to find mis-directions simply because they might have reached a different conclusion on the facts or expressed themselves differently – see AH (Sudan) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2007] UKHL 49; [2008] AC 678 per Baroness Hale of Richmond at para 30.
(ii) 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 Secretary of State for the Home Department [2010] UKSC 49; [2011] 2 All ER 65 at para 45 per Sir John Dyson.
(iii) 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 First-tier Tribunal (Social Entitlement Chamber) [2013] UKSC 19; [2013] 2 AC 48 at para 25 per Lord Hope.

Riley v Sivier [2023] EWCA Civ 71
“The overarching point is that an appeal is a review and not a re-run of the trial. To win on appeal the appellant has to show that there was some serious flaw in the judgment that calls for a change in the result or a retrial. When it comes to findings of fact, there are five points to make:
(1) The court will treat the factual findings of a trial judge with a generous degree of deference. To uphold an appeal on the basis of criticisms of this kind the appeal court will need to be satisfied that there was a critical finding of fact that was either unsupported by the evidence before the judge or a finding that no reasonable judge could have reached.
(2) This approach applies not only to findings of primary fact, but also to the evaluation of those facts and to inferences to be drawn from them.
(3) The court will bear in mind that the trial judge has a whole “sea of evidence” instead of “island-hopping” as appellants are prone to do when seeking to challenge findings at first instance.
(4) An appeal court is bound, unless there is compelling reason to the contrary, to assume that the trial judge has taken the whole of the evidence into her consideration. The mere fact that a judge does not mention a specific piece of evidence does not mean that she overlooked it.
(5) The same applies with even greater force to matters of argument. A judge is not bound to mention and address every single argument advanced”.

9. I return then to the impugned finding that the Appellant would be able to obtain his travel documents through his uncle. It is to be remembered of course that a decision is always to be read as a whole. However, the following findings were made:
(i) The abuse which the Appellant suffered arose while the Appellant was a child related to schoolwork and disobedience;
(ii) the Appellant need not return to live with his father;
(iii) the domestic circumstances in which the abuse is claimed took place would not be replicated;
(iv) the Appellant had not established (to the lower standard – see paragraph 10 of the Decision) that the Appellant’s father would now wish to either punish the Appellant or seek retribution;
(v) it was not surprising that the Appellant’s father tried to find the Appellant after he left given that he, the Appellant, was then a minor;
(vi) the Appellant had not established that after the period of time that he, the Appellant, had been away, that his father would now wish to do him harm;
(vii) the Appellant had not established that his father had or has connections with government officials;
(viii) the Appellant’s documents, required to facilitate a safe return are with his father;
(ix) the Appellant is not an entirely reliable witness and has been inconsistent in his account of being in contact with his maternal uncle since leaving Iraq;
(x) the Appellant had not established that he was no longer in touch with his uncle;
(xi) the Appellant has looked to his uncle as more of a father figure than his own father.
10. Having regard to those findings and the principles which govern whether I should allow this challenge to a finding of fact, I find the threshold which the Appellant has to meet has quite simply not been met. Quite how the uncle would negotiate with the Appellant’s father matters little, what the judge has found is that the Appellant has not established that his uncle with whom he, the Appellant, is very close, would not be able to obtain the document from the Appellant’s father, whom the Appellant has not established any longer has any interest in abusing or in any other way harming the Appellant. The conclusion which the judge reached, and which is now challenged, though it might have been more clearly expressed, is sufficiently reasoned such that the first ground of appeal is not made out and so, as the parties agreed, (as I do) the other grounds fall away.
DECISION
The appeal to the Upper Tribunal is dismissed The decision of the First-tier Tribunal shall stand.

Deputy Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

Dated: 31 October 2025