Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER Case No: UI-2025-002188
First-tier Tribunal No: PA/57663/2023
LP/11206/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

On 18th of September 2026

Before

DEPUTY UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE GRAVES

Between

FD
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr Ahmad, Counsel
For the Respondent: Ms Isherwood, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on Monday 16 September 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

BACKGROUND
1. The appellant appeals with permission against the decision of a judge of the First-tier Tribunal (“the judge”) promulgated on 4 February 2025, dismissing the appellant’s appeal against the respondent’s refusal of his protection and human rights claim, dated 29 September 2023.
2. The appellant arrived in the UK in February 2016 and claimed asylum. He said he was of Kurdish ethnicity and Iranian nationality, and had fled Iran just days before, when his friend was arrested by the Iranian authorities, in relation to work the appellant had been doing with the friend, delivering letters for the KDPI. The respondent was able to establish that the appellant was in Greece in December 2015, where he had been fingerprinted. The respondent interviewed the appellant and refused his claim on the basis it was not credible and it was not accepted that he was from Iran. The appellant appealed against that decision, and his appeal was dismissed on 27 April 2017, on the basis his claim was not credible and he had not established he was from Iran. The appellant did not attend that hearing.
3. The appellant then made a fresh claim for asylum in November 2019, which was again refused and his appeal against that second decision was heard on 3 February 2025. It is the judge’s decision from that appeal hearing that gives rise to the appeal before me.
4. The appellant’s application for permission to appeal was initially refused by the First-tier Tribunal, but on renewal to the Upper Tribunal, permission was granted with the following comments:
“It is arguable that the judge erred in her approach to the witness evidence of MH. It was MH’s evidence that the Appellant had visited him at his home in Iran. It is arguable that the judge erred by finding that MH was an honest witness, but rejecting his evidence on the crucial issue in the case, the Appellant’s nationality, on the basis that it was “extremely brief”.
The other grounds relied upon appear to have less merit. However, I do not limit the grounds on which permission is granted.”
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
5. I will deal only briefly with grounds 1 to 4 and ground 6, since I found them without merit and not capable of demonstrating an error of law. They essentially amount to a disagreement with the findings of the judge, and to some extent mischaracterise the judge’s findings, or assert a failure to address matters which the judge specifically had regard to. For example, the judge was required to have regard to the decision of a previous judge, which the appellant had not challenged by way of any application for permission to appeal at the time (Devaseelan (second appeals – ECHR – Extra-territorial effect) Sri Lanka [2002] UKIAT 00702). Mr Ahmad also submitted that the judge was in error, when considering the respondent’s record that the appellant was in Greece in December 2015, and its impact on the appellant’s credibility. It was submitted in the grounds and before me that the judge should have considered the impact of trauma on the appellant’s memory and his explanations for this inconsistency. Further that his illiteracy would have addressed the date discrepancy. When asked to direct me to where in the statements or evidence there was any explanation for the inconsistency, or medical evidence to support the submission that it was explained by the impact of trauma on memory or illiteracy, Mr Ahmad was unable to point me to any evidence at all before the judge on this point. There was also some mischaracterisation of the judge’s findings on evidence of the appellant’s involvement with the KDPI and to inconsistencies in his evidence at the interviews.
6. I find these grounds do not identify any material error of law within the decision. I would also emphasise the importance of any grounds and submissions setting out accurately what findings the judge did make, and avoiding any mischaracterisation.
Ground 5
7. The grounds then go on to address the judge’s treatment of the evidence of two witnesses, “SS” and “MH”.
8. As to the treatment of the evidence of SS, at paragraph 11 of the grounds it is asserted that it was not open to the judge to place no weight on SS’s witness statement, which went to ‘the trauma point’. The evidence from SS amounts to a letter, which makes no reference at all to trauma, to the appellant’s memory, or in fact to the core issue the judge was required to determine, which was the appellant’s nationality. The judge addressed this [at 30] in saying that no significant weight was attached to the letter from SS in relation to the issues the judge was required to determine, since the witness “cannot assist with the key issue in the case of the Appellant’s nationality”. The grounds yet again mischaracterise what the evidence from SS actually said, and its relevance to the appeal. It was entirely open to the judge to find that this evidence attracted no significant weight in relation to the issues before the judge, since it did not address any of those issues. As Ms Isherwood submitted at hearing before me, the grounds make assertions about what the evidence of SS asserted, that were simply ‘wrong’.
9. The grounds then address the more complex issue of the judge’s treatment of the evidence of MH. It is a matter for the judge to decide whether a witness is credible, whether some or all of their evidence is capable of reliance, what it establishes, and whether it is relevant to the issues and what weight should be attached to that evidence, provided any findings are adequately reasoned. MH was relied on as a witness in relation to the question of the appellant’s nationality. MH had asserted that he had known the appellant since meeting him in Iran in 2007, when the appellant had visited his family home ‘a few times’ with the appellant’s uncle. Further, that since then, they had reconnected in the United Kingdom. In relation to that statement, the judge found the written evidence on the question of the appellant’s nationality was ‘extremely brief’ and did not directly address the question of nationality, although arguably, it was at the very least relevant to that question.
10. MH also gave oral evidence at the hearing. The judge noted that MH asserted that the appellant’s uncle communicated with his own family in Iran, that he had seen the appellant on occasion in Iran, that the appellant lived in a different village to MH in Iran, that the appellant’s uncle was well known and popular, and that MH ‘claimed to know that the Appellant was Iranian’ [at 31 to 32]. With regard to whether the evidence of MH was capable of reliance, the judge found [at 31] that MH ‘presented as an honest witness who was seeking to assist his friend, and that nothing said here is intended to cast doubt on his integrity’. The judge then found that ‘very little weight’ should be attached to MH’s evidence, despite this finding, because his evidence ‘does not specifically address the question of his nationality’. I do find that to be a contradictory treatment of the evidence, in that the judge noted that MH asserted that he knew the appellant was Iranian, but then found his evidence did not address the question of nationality.
11. Further, while it is open to a judge to find a witness is credible and their evidence is capable of reliance, or they are an honest witness who is mistaken or their evidence cannot assist with addressing the relevant issues, MH’s evidence did assert knowledge, or belief in the appellant’s nationality as Iranian. MH asserted having met the appellant in Iran, knowing of the village where he lived, and being a ‘family friend’ and knowing his family. It is arguable that this evidence was relevant to the question of whether the appellant lived in Iran, whether his family did so, and therefore whether this supported his claim to be an Iranian national.
12. The judge did give reasons for why MH’s evidence should attract very little weight, in that the judge relied on MH having said he had not checked anyone’s identity card, and as to the appellant’s uncle’s nationality, that MH regarded him as being from ‘one community’. The judge found this meant that MH saw the uncle and the appellant as Kurds and so did not differentiate between whether they were Iraqi Kurds or Iranian Kurds. The judge did not set out any record of evidence, however, to establish that the witness was asked if that was what he indeed meant by this statement. The appellant’s grounds assert this was an assumption made by the judge in the absence of any clarification with MH.
13. MH was also recorded to have said he had not seen any Iraqi Kurds in his home area of Iran. Despite that, the judge found that MH could not be sure which side of the border with Iraq the appellant’s family actually came from. It is therefore unclear whether the judge was finding that in the absence of MH having seen corroborative nationality documentation, the evidence of MH was not capable of attracting weight.
14. The judge’s findings were also not sufficiently detailed to establish what exactly was accepted from MH’s evidence, such as whether the judge had accepted that the appellant was living in Iran with his family in the claimed home village, but the family could have originated from the other side of the border with Iraq, and so were not necessarily Iranian nationals, or whether the judge was finding that the witness could have been mistaken on where they lived, and in fact he had only seen the appellant and his uncle in Iran but they might live in Iraq and be nationals of that country. The respondent had not asserted an alternative nationality for the appellant, and only went so far as to acknowledge that while Kurdish Sorani was a language of Iran, it was also a language of Iraq [at paragraph 24]. I have been unable to identify anything in the decision, review or record of the respondent’s submissions that would address what the respondent’s position was, in the event that MH was treated as a credible witness, whether the respondent still disputed the appellant’s claim to be an Iranian national.
15. I therefore find that there are aspects of the judge’s treatment of MH’s evidence that are internally contradictory. There is also an absence of sufficient reasoning to explain the judge’s approach to this evidence, and it is unclear what MH’s evidence was accepted to establish. The appellant also asserts that the judge drew inferences or assumptions from MH’s evidence, without giving him the opportunity to address them. It must be considered too the possible impact of finding that MH was a truthful witness on the issue of meeting with the appellant in Iran, on the credibility assessment of the appellant’s own evidence about his nationality and background.
16. I do find that while the decision is otherwise detailed and the findings are sufficiently reasoned and were open to the judge on the evidence, that this aspect of the decision does contain an error of law in its treatment of the evidence of the appellant’s witness, MH. Further, since that evidence went directly to the central issue in the appeal, as well as to credibility, that this is a material error, that infects the overall assessment of the evidence.
CONCLUSION
17. For the reasons set out above, I find there is a material error of law in relation to the decision.
18. As to whether any findings can be preserved, I find they cannot, given they go to the core issues of credibility and nationality.
Remaking
19. I have considered whether to retain the matter for remaking in the Upper Tribunal, in line with the general principle set out in statement 7 of the Senior President’s Practice Statement and further considered in AEB v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2022] EWCA Civ 1512 and Begum (Remaking or remittal) Bangladesh [2023] UKUT 00046 (IAC). Given the likelihood of further oral evidence and cross examination on credibility, and the importance of the availability of the two tier appellate system to both parties, I have decided to remit the appeal to be heard afresh by another judge in the First-tier Tribunal.

NOTICE OF DECISION
The appeal is allowed only to the extent it is remitted to be heard again in the First-tier Tribunal afresh by another judge.

H Graves
Deputy Upper Tribunal Judge Graves
Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

17 September 2026