Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2025-002647
First-tier Tribunal No: PA/50247/2024
LP/13976/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

On 23 September 2025

Before

Deputy upper tribunal JUDGE Kelly

Between

NA
(ANONYMITY ORDERED)
Appellant
and

THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr T Hussain, Counsel instructed by Kirklees Citizens Advice and Law Centre
For the Respondent: Mr McVeety, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer.

Heard At Bradford on the 12th September 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 member of the public to identify the appellant. Failure to comply with this order could amount to a contempt of court.

DECISION AND REASONS
Introduction
1. The Appellant is a citizen of Iraq. The Respondent refused his protection and human rights claims on the 20th December 2023 and his appeal against that refusal was dismissed by First-tier Tribunal Judge Horton on the 5th March 2025. Judge Horton subsequently granted the appellant permission to appeal against dismissal of his appeal against the refusal of his protection claim. Judge Horton however refused permission to appeal against dismissal of his appeal against refusal of his human rights claim. Following a renewed application, the Upper Tribunal upheld the decision of Judge Horton to refuse permission to appeal against dismissal of the appeal against refusal of his human rights claim. I am accordingly concerned only with whether the First-tier Tribunal made a material error of law in dismissing the appeal against refusal of the protection claim.
The appellant’s case
2. The essence of the appellant’s protection claim before the First-tier Tribunal was that he was at risk of being killed by a powerful and influential member of the KDP (IS). This was because IS had rejected the appellant’s proposal that he (the appellant) take his (IS’s) daughter (Aisha) as his second wife with a view to her assisting with the care of the disabled child of the appellant and his existing wife. Following that rejection, the appellant met Aisha in her family’s orchard where Aisha was shot and killed. The appellant thereafter fled to the UK with his wife and their four minor children.
Findings of the First-tier Tribunal
3. Judge Horton accepted that the appellant (i) “must know IS and probably quite well”, and (ii) “it may well be that he [the appellant] was IS’s barber and IS had a daughter” [34].
4. However, Judge Horton found it implausible that the appellant -
(i) would risk seeking Aisha’s hand in marriage “given the likely reaction from the violent and powerful father” [24];
(ii) “could have expected Aisha’s father to agree to marriage as she came from a powerful and rich family, whilst the appellant claims to be poor who already had a wife and disabled son who needed a great deal of care” [characterised by the judge as an “objective point”] [24];
(iii) could have been unaware of the reason why Aisha remained unmarried at the age of 39 [28];
(iv) would leave Aisha to die in an orchard whilst he fled the scene given that he was supposedly “madly in love” with her [28].
5. Amongst the other reasons the judge gave for finding the appellant’s core account incredible, were –
(i) his failure to claim protection in any of the safe countries through which he travelled on his way to the UK [21];
(ii) the failure to mention prior to the appeal hearing that the person who shot and killed Aisha was her brother, together with his inability to give a coherent explanation for why he now believed this to be the case [27];
(iii) His failure to explain how he was able to fund the purchase of an expensive motor vehicle and to support his three children (one of whom needed professional care due to cerebral palsy) given his claim that his sole source of income was from trading as a barber and consequent money problems [29];
(iv) The appellant’s failure to call his wife to give supporting evidence at the appeal hearing [26].
The grounds of appeal.
6. The sole ground upon which Judge Horton granted permission to appeal concerns arguable errors in his assessment of the credibility of the appellant’s factual narrative. There are two limbs to the criticism made of the judge’s findings -
(1) basing them upon a subjective assessment of the evidence (‘plausibility’)
(2) placing weight upon the absence of evidence from the appellant’s wife.
Analysis
7. Whilst Judge Horton granted permission to appeal on the ground that his overall credibility assessment was arguably flawed, he nevertheless opined that “there is no merit in the subsidiary argument that not calling a key available witness (his wife) was something simply to be ignored”. The grounds of appeal point out, rightly, that there is no requirement for a person claiming asylum to provide corroboration of their account. However, it does not follow from this that where (as here) relevant supporting evidence appears to be readily available, the Tribunal is unable to have regard to its absence. The grounds of appeal also argue that the appellant’s wife could not in any event have given relevant evidence. That, however, is simply a disagreement with the Tribunal’s entirely sustainable view that the appellant’s wife could have provided support for his claim that (a) he had proposed taking IS’s daughter as his second wife, and (b) that she had agreed to his proposal. Mr Hussain advanced yet a third argument (not pleaded in the grounds of appeal) namely, that it was procedurally unfair for the judge to take this point given that it had not been taken by the Secretary of State. I reject that argument because the appellant bore the burden of proving his claim. The need to provide apparently readily available evidence to discharge that burden - or at least provide an explanation for its absence - ought therefore to have been obvious.
8. Turning to the complaint concerning the judge’s plausibility assessment, I agree with Mr McVeety’s submission that this is largely misconceived. As Mr Hussain accepted at the hearing, the Law does not prohibit the use of plausibility as a tool for assessing the credibility of a claim. What the legal authorities do caution against, however, is decisionmakers basing their plausibility assessments upon their own experience of societal and cultural norms that may not be those of the society in which the claimed events took place. That is not however what Judge Horton did. Far from assessing the plausibility of the appellant’s claim from the perspective of a citizen living in a liberal western society, he appropriately assessed the claim within the context of northern Iraq’s strictly hierarchical society wherein social mobility is rare and the consequence of insulting the family honour of a social superior is often fatal. Mr McVeety submitted that the appellant’s account was analogous to a serf in medieval England seeking permission to marry the daughter of his feudal overlord Whilst analogies are necessarily inexact, this one neatly illustrates the importance of context when assessing plausibility. The fact that the appellant also claimed to have been seeking the hand in marriage of the daughter of IS as a second wife, and with a view to her acting as an unpaid carer for his disabled child in a country where polygamy is rare if not unheard of, were also a matters of which the judge was entitled to have cumulative regard. Thus, whilst it was probably unwise for the judge to suggest that it was implausible for the appellant to have abandoned Aisha to her fate in the orchard (courage not being a universal human trait) the judge’s overall assessment of the above core aspects of the appellant’s claim was entirely appropriate.
9. The judge’s assessment of the credibility of the appellant’s claim was not in any event based solely upon his assessment of its plausibility. It was also based upon the other factors enumerated at paragraphs 4 and 5 (above). Excepting the judge’s consideration of the absence of evidence from the appellant’s wife (considered at paragraph 7, above) the grounds do not make any criticism of the judge’s consideration of these matters, one of which (the appellant’s failure to claim protection in a safe country) he was in any event required to treat as adverse to the appellant’s credibility.
Notice of Decision
10. The appeal is dismissed, and the decision of the First-tier Tribunal therefore stands.

David Kelly Date: 15th September 2025

Deputy Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber