Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2025-001258
UI-2025-001260

First-tier Tribunal No:
PA/62648/2023
PA/56931/2023
LP/10155/2024
LP/08532/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

On 24th of September 2025

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE RUDDICK

Between

MFH and AFH
(ANONYMITY DIRECTION MADE)
Appellants
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Ms A. Sepulveda, instructed by REETFountain Solicitors
For the Respondent: Mr K. Ojo, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 19 September 2025

Order Regarding Anonymity

Pursuant to rule 14 of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008, the appellants are 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 appellants are twin brothers and accepted to be citizens of Iraq of Kurdish ethnicity and from Kirkuk. They both claimed asylum on 11 August 2019. The respondent interviewed each brother separately in August 2022 and refused their protection claims in separate decisions, made on 24 November 2023 and 20 September 2023, respectively.
2. An anonymity order was made by the First-tier Tribunal because the appellants have made a claim for international protection. I consider that it is appropriate for that order to continue because the UK’s obligations to persons seeking international protection and the need to protect the confidentiality of the asylum process outweigh the public interest in disclosing their identity.
3. The basis of the appellants’ asylum claims was that they feared a neighbour who was a high-ranking member of al-Hashd-al-Shaabi, known in English by the acronym PMF (for Popular Mobilisation Forces). They said that they had done some work on the brake pads of the neighbour’s car, but the brakes had subsequently failed, causing a car accident in which the neighbour’s mother had been killed. The neighbour blamed them for the accident, causing them to flee the country. They also said that they had been involved in political activities in the UK.
4. As their protection claims arise out of the same facts, the brothers’ appeals were linked and heard before the First-tier Tribunal (“FTT”) in a single hearing. In a decision dated 13 January 2025, the FTT dismissed their joint appeal, rejecting their account in its entirety on credibility grounds. They now appeal with permission against that decision.
The grounds of appeal
5. The appellants were granted permission to appeal on four grounds. I set them out here numbered (i)-(iv), although in the grounds as pleaded they were (i), (iii), (viii) and (ix). Permission was refused on five other grounds.
6. The grounds of appeal before me were that the FTT had erred by:
(i) Attaching too much weight to the appellants’ failure to identify what rank their neighbour held in the PMF;
(ii) Making findings based on assumptions;
(iii) Applying too high a standard of proof, particularly in expecting the appellant’s to produce arrest warrants; and
(iv) Failing to make a finding about whether they hold genuine political beliefs.
The hearing
7. At the hearing before me both parties agreed that ground (ii) raised a sufficiently serious challenge to the FTT’s credibility assessment that if it was made out, I would not need to deal with the other three grounds.
8. There had been no Rule 24 response, but Mr Ojo confirmed that the respondent opposed the appeal. I then expressed to Mr Ojo that my preliminary view was that ground (ii) was made out, because there were a number of places in the decision where the FTT appeared to rely on assumptions about how various people would have behaved and how businesses and militias operate in Iraq, rather than on any evidence. Mr Ojo accepted that the FTT had relied on several unevidenced assumptions, but submitted that the error might not be material, as these were not the FTT’s only reasons for rejecting the appellants’ credibility.
9. After hearing further submissions, I concluded that the error was material, because of the number of assumptions involved and because of the well-established principle that credibility must be assessed in the round.
10. I therefore allowed the appeal and gave an oral summary of my reasons. I now set out my reasons in writing.
Discussion
11. In deciding whether the Judge’s decision involved the making of a material error of law, I have reminded myself of the principles set out in a long line of cases, including Ullah v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2024] EWCA Civ 201, at [26], Yalcin v SSHD [2024] EWCA Civ 74, at [50] and [51], Gadinala v SSHD [2024] EWCA Civ 1410, at [46] and [47], and Volpi & Anor v Volpi [2022] EWCA Civ 464, at [2-4] and of the danger of “island-hopping”, rather than looking at the evidence, and the reasoning, as a whole. See Fage UK Ltd & Anor v Chobani UK Ltd & Anor [2014] EWCA Civ 5 [114].
12. In spite of bearing these principles in mind, I have concluded that in this case, the FTT did not conduct its credibility assessment in accordance with the well-established legal principles. The key principle that the FTT failed to follow is that plausibility must always be assessed in the context of the country and the culture in which the events described are said to have occurred. See: Y v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2006] EWCA Civ 1223 at [25]; HK v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2006] EWCA Civ 1037 [27-30]. As Keene LJ wrote at [25] in Y (citing the IAT in Kasolo v SSD 13190):
"'An English judge may have, or think that he has, a shrewd idea of how a Lloyds Broker or a Bristol wholesaler, or a Norfolk farmer, might react in some situation which is canvassed in the course of a case but he may, and I think should, feel very much more uncertain about the reactions of a Nigerian merchant, or an Indian ships' engineer, or a Yugoslav banker. Or even, to take a more homely example, a Sikh shopkeeper trading in Bradford. No judge worth his salt could possibl[y] assume that men of different nationalities, educations, trades, experience, creeds and temperaments would act as he might think he would have done or even - which may be quite different - in accordance with his concept of what a reasonable man would have done."
13. Although plausibility may be one indicator of credibility, moreover, it must be used with care, as part of structured approach and together with other indicators of credibility. There is an obvious risk in relying on plausibility alone. See KB & AH (credibility-structured approach) Pakistan [2017] UKUT 00491 (IAC) at [28]-[30].
14. At the hearing before me, it was common ground that the FTT had fallen into precisely this error at multiple points in the decision. Although all were not canvassed at the hearing, I set them out here:
(i) [54]: “The court needed to know a rank or official position and it needed to know he had the requisite rank to control the PMF activities throughout the whole country. One only needs to state this to appreciate that almost nobody has such power. It is surely a fantasy. A person with that level of power would surely have a searchable name and rank on the internet and the name could be matched if it does match.”;
(ii) [56]: “I would expect to have seen some media coverage of a very powerful individual.”; this is repeated at [72] and [87].
(iii) [61]: “The Appellants have made a case based on unsubstantiated incompetence at their work. […] It is not credible that they failed to test the brakes. It is not credible that they returned the vehicle without paperwork to show that the brakes had been tested and were now safe.”
(iv) [63]: “My understanding is that it does not take long to cut the brakes and it can be done under cover of darkness.”
(v) [63]: “a high-ranking person in a competitive organisation of responsible and accountable individuals (such as the PMF) would surely be too intelligent to make a baseless assumption”.
(vi) [68]: “I find it highly unlikely that the aunt and sister were assaulted. There is no rational motive to do so as they do not work in the garage.”
(vii) [70]: the PMF “is a state funded body and employees must expect to account internally for its expenditure and any violent actions. The Appellants have not considered how other members would react to being invited to take a legal and health risk by being involved in a violent vendetta.”
(viii) [76]: “I reject the theory put forward that the neighbour is bugging the family house. […] This is an excuse, so that the brothers cannot communicate today with their family left behind. It is easily tested by using a bug detector and removing the bug (similarly, using a computer expert to clean up any computers or phones in the house).”
(ix) [91]: “would there not be an arrest warrant issued if the authorities are already aware of Facebook postings and demonstrations of the Appellants?”
15. To some extent, this error overlaps with the error identified at ground one. Having decided (without any clear evidential base) that the neighbour must have been exceptionally high-ranking to pose a genuine threat to the appellants, the FTT then placed considerable weight on the appellants’ failure to identify what that rank was and the failure to produce media reports about him.
16. It is trite that credibility must be assessed in the round. Although the FTT did point to other adverse credibility indicators (such as the appellants’ failure to claim asylum in France and the vagueness of some aspects of their account), given the sheer number of plausibility points that had no apparent basis in the evidence, it is impossible to say that the appellants’ credibility would have been rejected if these points had not been taken.
17. For these reasons, the decision of the FTT involved the making of material errors of law, requiring it to be set aside in its entirety.
18. Given the extent of fact-finding required, I consider it appropriate to remit the appeal to the FTT.

Notice of Decision
The decision of the First-tier Tribunal dated 13 January 2025 is set aside in its entirety. The linked appeals are remitted to the First-tier Tribunal for a fresh hearing on all issues, before any other judge.

E. Ruddick

Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

19 September 2025