Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2025-002645

First-tier Tribunal No: PA/59835/2024
LP/02326/2025

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

On 10th of December 2025

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE O’BRIEN

Between

RQ
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Ms L Barton of Counsel
For the Respondent: Ms S Lecointe, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 9 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 born on 10 January 1997. He appeals against a decision of the First-tier Tribunal (FtT) promulgated on 21 April 2025 to dismiss his appeal against the respondent’s refusal on 16 January 2024 of his protection and human rights claim.

2. The appellant is a citizen of Iraq of Kurdish ethnicity who comes from Kirkuk. He claimed to be at risk from ISIS and also from the ruling parties of the IKR because of his political activities in the United Kingdom and online. The appellant also claimed no longer to have possession of his identification documents.

3. The FtT rejected the appellant’s claim to be at risk from Isis [17]. It also rejected the appellant’s claim not to be in contact with his family and to have ‘lost‘ his CSID in Turkiye [21]. As for the appellant’s claim to be at risk because of his sur place activities, the FtT found that the background evidence did not show that participants in political activities in the United Kingdom critical of the IKR ruling parties would be at risk on return [20], but also found that the appellant was not from the IKR but rather an area governed from Baghdad [18].

4. Permission to appeal was granted on limited grounds by another judge of the FtT. The grounds for which permission was given can be summarised thus. The FtT failed to assess the appellant’s account of past events in Iraq (ground 3). The FtT failed to apply extant country guidance (ground 4). The FtT gave inadequate reasons for rejecting the appellant’s claim, in particular his claim no longer to have his CSID and for finding that he was in contact with his family (ground 5). The FtT failed to take into account evidence in respect of the appellant’s sur place activities and consequential risk in Iraq (ground 6).

5. An application was made by the appellant pursuant to rule 15(2A) of the Upper Tribunal Rules of Procedure 2008 to rely on evidence not before the FtT comprising Red Cross tracing documentation and Facebook posts. Ms Barton accepted that the documents would be relevant only to any rehearing of the substantive appeal. They did not go whether the FtT’s decision involved an error of law. Consequently, I refused to admit the additional evidence for the purposes of this error of law hearing, but without prejudice to any application to rely on them should the FtT decision be set aside.

6. The representatives each made oral submissions which, although I refer to below only to the extent necessary to understand my reasons, I took into account in their entirety.

Conclusions

Ground 3

7. The FtT’s consideration of the appellant’s account of events in Iraq can be found at [11] (save for the last sentence) and [14]-[17]:

‘11. The Appellant is from Kirkuk. He claimed in 2015 that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) had murdered his brother, and that ISIS was threatening his father. He maintains these claims and says that when he returned to Iraq in 2016 he joined a group called the Rizgari that opposed ISIS. He says that a friend of his in the group was murdered in 2017 and so he went into hiding for about nine months before leaving Iraq…

14. The Appellant claims that his friend S recruited him into the Rizgari. He gives no details about what Rizgari is. He claims that his role was to gather intelligence about ISIS activities and report it to the police but does not explain how he did this.

15. He claims that his friend S was abducted by ISIS, murdered, and his body found outside the village. He claims ISIS called him on his telephone to threaten him. The Appellant went into what he called “semi-hiding” with his family until he left Iraq a second time. He claims that he moved to a place about 40 minutes away by car where he lived for about nine months with his family. He says he only went out of the house for “necessary shopping”.

16. I do not accept to the balance of probabilities or even the lower standard that the Appellant was in “semi-hiding” from ISIS because he was at risk. According to him, ISIS knew who he was and knew about his activities, whatever those were. I do not accept that “semi-hiding” would be sufficient to protect him for 9 months from ISIS. In any case, if what he is saying is true, then he lived with his mother and was able to periodically leave the house. There is nothing about what he described that is unduly harsh.

17. The Appellant says that he does not know S’ surname, despite being his friend and working with him for some time. He also says that S’ death was widely reported in the press and on social media and that “everyone was talking about it”. I do not accept that it is even reasonably likely that the Appellant worked with a man and then saw reports of his murder that “everyone” was talking about, including reports that were shown to him on social media, but never came to know the man’s surname. I do not accept that the Appellant is at risk from ISIS.’

8. Contrary to the grounds, the FtT considered the key elements of appellant’s account of events in Iraq and, it is clear, rejected them as not even reasonably likely to be true. Certainly, no key element of that account has been identified in the grounds which I accept has been overlooked in the decision. It is clear that the appellant’s account was rejected not merely because the appellant did not know the surname of S, but also because other elements, such as his claim to have been in ‘semi-hiding’, were incredible. In any event, it was open to the judge to find the appellant’s inability to recall his friend’s surname a matter significantly damaging to his overall credibility.

9. Ground 3 also alleges an erroneous failure to take into account evidence specifically relied upon by the appellant (pages 13-15 and 17-19 of his bundle). This argument was not developed by Ms Barton. It is in any event manifestly hopeless. The pages in question comprise background information on the displacement of Kurds by Government of Iraqi forces and Shia militia. However, that matter is expressly dealt with by the FtT at [19], in which it is accepted as plausible that the appellant’s mother has been displaced, and so it is clear that the evidence in question was taken into account by the FtT.

10. For these reasons, ground 3 fails.

Grounds 4 and 5

11. Criticism is made in ground 4 of the FtT recording that the appellant claimed his CSID was lost in Turkey, whereas it was the appellant’s case that an agent had taken his CSID. Ms Barton was unable to say what material difference any such misunderstanding would have made save to give the impression that the FtT taken insufficient care in assessing the appellant’s case. As it is, whether the appellant had claimed to have lost his CSID or had it taken from him, the fact remained that his case was that the CSID was lost to him. No material error of fact amounting to an error of law arises from the FtT’s description of the events in question nor is it sufficient to conclude that the FtT failed to give anxious scrutiny to the case. In short, this criticism was forensic nitpicking and discloses no error of law.

12. Of more import is the FtT’s assessment of the appellant’s claim no longer to have access to his CSID. The FtT sets out that assertion in [12] and its ultimate conclusion at [21]:

‘12. According to the Appellant’s previous refusal letter in 2016, he said in his asylum interview that his Civil Statius [sic] Identity Document (CSID) was at his home. He claims that he brought it with him when he left Iraq in 2016 and it was lost in Türkiye on the journey.’

‘21. I find that the Appellant has not shown that it is reasonably likely to be true that he cannot access his CSID, because he has not shown that he has no contact with his family or that he lost it in Türkiye.’

13. In addition to the adverse credibility findings in the FtT’s assessment between [14] and [17] (as noted in my analysis above of ground 3), which are all plainly adequately reasoned, it also finds at [19] (my emphasis):

19. This raises the issue that there are government-backed militias, ie the “Popular Mobilization Forces” (PMF) operating in the Kirkuk area to displace Kurds. It is plausible that his mother in Kirkuk has been displaced by the PMF. But it does not follow that he has no contact with any family member. The Appellant said in oral evidence that his mother and paternal uncle cannot use the internet because they are “aged”. He said that his uncle was about 68 years old and his mother was born in 1978. Neither of them is of an age that makes the ability to use the internet implausible, especially his mother, who is not “aged” in any reasonable understanding of that term. I find the Appellant not to be credible, even to the lower standard, about this claim that he has no contact with his family.

14. This paragraph adequately explains why the FtT does not accept that the appellant is even reasonably likely to have lost contact with his family. Moreover, given the FtT’s rejection of all the key aspects of the appellant’s account as incredible, little more in fact needs to be said to justify rejection of his claim not to have access to his CSID at [21].

15. Moreover, having concluded that the appellant did have access to his CSID, the FtT was not obliged to consider the appellant’s inability to redocument in the United Kingdom or Baghdad, let alone to deal with that matter in its reasons.

16. For these reasons, grounds 4 and 5 fail.

Ground 6

17. The appellant’s case on risk arising from sur place activities was put in two bases: principally that he would be forced to suppress his genuine political beliefs and activities on return, but additionally that the IKR authorities would be aware of and persecute the appellate because of his sur place activities in any event.

18. In the latter regard, the ASA relies on paragraph 3.1.4 of the respondent’s Country Policy and Information Note, ‘Iraq: Opposition to the Government in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI), version 3, published in July 2023, to establish the likelihood of the authorities being aware of his activities (although reference is also made to paragraph 3.1.7 as highlighting that the authorities actively monitor those who criticise the government including those engaging in relatively low-level political activities such as on-line dissent).

19. In the grounds, the appellant refers also to a photograph in his own bundle showing him using a loudhailer on one occasion, to a Facebook page in the respondent’s bundle showing that the appellant had 1,071 friends and to a page in the refusal letter in which several paragraphs of the above CPIN (including those referred to in the ASA) were quoted.

20. At [20], the FtT said the following regarding this aspect of the appellant’s claim:

20. I accept that the Appellant has taken part in demonstrations against the parties that rule the IKR and that he posts material on his social media. But the evidence does not show that he has any profile above being a participant. The background evidence does indicate that people with a profile and history of taking part in anti-government activity inside Iraq may be targeted, but the evidence does not show that participants in the UK are at risk.

21. With respect, none the evidence referred to in the ASA or grounds of appeal contradicts the FtT’s findings in the final sentence of the paragraph. Moreover, nothing in the decision could reasonably lead to the conclusion that the FtT has failed to take into account the evidence to which it was drawn. As it is, the FtT also found at [18]:

‘18. It is argued in the Appellant’s skeleton argument that the Kurdish ruling parties, the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), punish any public dissent and online activism and that they will target the Appellant on his return. However, the Appellant is not from the Iraqi Kurdish Region (IKR); he is from Kirkuk, which is governed from Baghdad.’

22. This finding is not challenged (and indeed is manifestly correct). The appellant does not explain, either in his ASA or in his grounds of appeal how he would be at risk on return to Government of Iraq territory from the IKR government, either from activities discovered by the latter whilst in the United Kingdom or even continued protesting against the IKR Government. Ms Barton had no answer to the point either.

23. Consequently, ground 6 discloses no material error of law in the FtT’s reasoning.

24. For these reasons, the appeal is dismissed.

Notice of Decision

1. The decision of the FtT did not involve the making of an error of law.
2. The appeal is dismissed and the decision of the FtT stands undisturbed.

Sean O’Brien

Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

8 December 2025