Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2025-003214

First-tier Tribunal No: PA/63919/2024
LP/03474/2025

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

On 13th of November 2025

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE KAMARA

Between

SE
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

Secretary of State for the Home Department
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr F Aziz, counsel instructed by Lei Dat & Baig Solicitors Ltd
For the Respondent: Mr A Mullen, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 3 November 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
Introduction
1. The appellant has been granted permission to appeal the decision of the First-tier Tribunal dismissing his appeal following a hearing which took place on 9 June 2025.
2. Permission to appeal was granted by the same First-tier Tribunal judge who heard the appeal on 15 July 2025.
Anonymity
3. I have continued the anonymity order made by the First-Tier Tribunal. I have considered the public interest in open justice, but conclude that it is outweighed by the importance of facilitating the discharge of the United Kingdom’s obligations to those claiming international protection because of the need for confidentiality.
Factual Background
4. The appellant is a national of Egypt now aged 44 who arrived in the United Kingdom by air in December 2022 and applied for asylum upon arrival. His wife and three minor children are claiming asylum on the same basis. The original basis of the appellant’s claim was that he was detained at the airport in 2005 for keeping a beard and was tortured. There were many occasions when he was detained for the same reasons in the following years on suspicion of being associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, culminating in an event in January 2022 when he was asked to become and informant and was assaulted resulting in a shoulder injury. Also in 2022, while at work, the appellant reported to his manager anomalies in invoices issued by the Ministry of Defence. The appellant heard that the security services raided his former residence in September 2022 and he and his family were able to leave Egypt with the assistance of a retired judge.
5. The decision under challenge is dated 30 April 2024. In short, the respondent accepted the appellant’s identity but rejected his claim that he was of adverse interest to the security service in Egypt owing to a substantial series of inconsistencies in his account.
The decision of the First-tier Tribunal
6. At the hearing before the First-tier Tribunal, it was clarified that the appellant was relying only on recent events from 2022, not the period from 2005 onwards and that he was not claiming asylum on the basis of religious discrimination. The judge rejected the event which was said to have immediately preceded the appellant’s departure from Egypt, noting that the appellant’s claim relied upon a speculative and unsupported account from a neighbour. Also noted were inconsistencies in and omissions from the appellant’s account as well as the fact that the appellant and his family were able to leave Egypt using their own passports.
The appeal to the Upper Tribunal
7. The grounds of appeal can be summarised as follows
Ground one – a failure to consider material witness evidence in the form of a statement from a neighbour (AMFI) which the judge noted was absent from the evidence [18]
Ground two – a failure to clarify evidence in respect of the appellant’s claim that he was not living at his home but at an unregistered property and why his documents all showed the earlier address.
8. Permission to appeal was granted solely on the first ground, with the judge granting permission commenting that there was evidence which did not seem to have been taken into account.
9. The respondent filed a Rule 24 response dated 25 July 2025, in which the appeal was opposed, with the following comments being made.
The Respondent submits that the ground of appeal does not disclose a material error of law. At [12], specific reference is made to how the supporting letter from Ahmed Ibrahim was received by the Appellant. Reference is made to the letter signed by the Appellant’s manager at page 69 of the hearing bundle, and ‘other supporting documents’ being obtained by the previous solicitors. It is recorded that the Appellant did not know why covering emails and letters had not been provided. In the Respondent’s Review dated 05 March 2025, at paragraphs 12-18, submissions were made as to the letter provided by the Appellant’s lawyer in Egypt. The FTTJ was aware of the supporting letter and the letter from the Appellant’s lawyer. The Respondent submits that the finding at the end of [18] should be read within the wider context of the findings at [16]-[22]. Those findings were reasonably open to the FTTJ, as was the conclusion at [23] that the Appellant’s account was not credible.
The error of law hearing
10. The matter comes before the Upper Tribunal to determine whether the decision contains an error of law and, if it is so concluded, to either re-make the decision or remit the appeal to the First-tier Tribunal to do so. A bundle was submitted by the appellant containing, inter alia, the core documents in the appeal, including the appellant’s and respondent’s bundles before the First-tier Tribunal.
11. The hearing was attended, via CVP, by representatives for both parties as above. Both representatives made succinct submissions and the conclusions below reflect those arguments and submissions where necessary.
Discussion
12. It was agreed by the parties that the judge erred in stating at [18] that the appellant had failed to provide a statement from the neighbour who witnessed the raid on his house. The appellant had provided just such a document at page 105 of his bundle of evidence before the First-tier Tribunal. Furthermore, a further document provided by the appellant, said to be from the appellant’s lawyer in Egypt, also provided further evidence that the appellant had come to the adverse interest of the security services. I accept that those two documents, assuming they are reliable, indicated that the judge was wrong to state at [18] that the appellant’s ‘entire’ claim relied upon an ‘unsupported account from a neighbour.’
13. Mr Mullen argued that the error made by the judge was not material in light of the remainder of the judge’s findings. Mr Aziz contended that the judge’s error had infected the remaining findings, rendering the entire decision unsafe.
14. Having reserved my decision, I now examine the judge’s findings which are set out from [16-22] of the decision. At [16] the judge notes that the appellant has abandoned a significant part of the case which he had put before the Secretary of State. That abandoned claim was that he was harassed and detained from 2005 until 2022 owing to having a long beard and was therefore suspected of having Islamist links.
15. I note that it was only in the appellant’s skeleton argument that it was conceded on the appellant’s behalf that this claim to be at risk for having a beard was not supported by the country evidence and was not being progressed.
16. At [16] the judge also considered the appellant’s additional claim that he was assaulted in January 2022 for refusing to act as an informant but rejected this as the cause of an injury to his shoulder as lacking in credibility owing to the appellant’s failure to report this incident to the authorities in Egypt or to leave his country for a further eight months. This is, therefore, the background to the judge’s findings on the incident upon which the appellant continued to rely upon, which took place in September 2022.
17. At [17] of the decision the judge commented that they were ‘less concerned’ than the respondent regarding the inconsistencies in the appellant’s description of the rank of the senior person regarding whom the appellant had made the work-related complaint.
18. It was at [18] that the judge made the comment that the appellant’s claim relied on ‘a speculative and unsupported account from a neighbour.’ The account of the neighbour, was set out in a letter which appeared in the appellant’s bundle before the First-tier Tribunal. The relevant part of this letter says as follows;
‘I was there again in September 2022, and they were asking me about (the appellant). I told them that I do not know because (the appellant) was wronged by the State security many times because of his beard, but his morals and dealings with the people do not change.’
19. In addition, at [12] the judge made a reference to the letter from the neighbour when recording the content of cross-examination. Despite this mention, the judge clearly stated that there was no statement from the neighbour and this is the foundation of the grant of permission and my finding that the judge erred in this. Nonetheless, also at [18] the judge states that the appellant has not explained how the neighbour knew that the people carrying out the raid were from the security services. That information is not disclosed by the letter from the neighbour. The said letter refers to ‘the government’ previously wanting to arrest the appellant because he had grown a beard, that the appellant had been wronged by state security but does not explain how it was the neighbour knew that the visitors were from the security services. Nor was there any assistance with this matter in the letter from the Egyptian lawyer. That letter contains a bland warning to the appellant not to return to Egypt ‘permanently,’ as he will be detained and transferred to one of the state security departments. The vague contents of this letter as well as that of the neighbour, which is similarly vague, even if considered, could not possibly result in the judge concluding that there was a real risk of the appellant facing persecution or ill-treatment in Egypt.
20. There is no challenge to the judge’s findings at [19-22] of the decision. In those paragraphs, the judge found there was an absence of consistency and clarity as to whether and why the appellant changed his telephone number, and how this had resulted in the security services being unable to find him. Other credibility concerns include the appellant’s ability to remain residing at his long-term address for three months after the September 2022 incident without being traced; his ability to travel to the British High Commission in Cairo to complete visa applications without incident; that the authorities had not simply asked his former neighbour for his new address and the lack of a credible explanation as to how the appellant, his wife and three children were able to travel through checkpoints in Cairo and leave Egypt openly on genuine passports without coming to the attention of the security services.
21. Given the foregoing, the issue of the overlooked documents was the least of the problems with the appellant’s account. It cannot be said that the judge’s findings were infected given the sufficient and unchallenged adverse findings which undermined the appellant’s account.

Notice of Decision
The making of the decision of the First-tier Tribunal did not involve the making of an error on a point of law.
The decision of the First-tier Tribunal shall stand.

T Kamara

Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

4November 2025

NOTIFICATION OF APPEAL RIGHTS

1. A person seeking permission to appeal against this decision must make a written application to the Upper Tribunal. Any such application must be received by the Upper Tribunal within the appropriate period after this decision was sent to the person making the application. The appropriate period varies, as follows, according to the location of the individual and the way in which the Upper Tribunal’s decision was sent.

2. Where the person who appealed to the First-tier Tribunal is in the United Kingdom at the time that the application for permission to appeal is made, and is not in detention under the Immigration Acts, the appropriate period is 12 working days (10 working days, if the notice of decision is sent electronically).

3. Where the person making the application is in detention under the Immigration Acts, the appropriate period is 7 working days (5 working days, if the notice of decision is sent electronically).

4. Where the person who appealed to the First-tier Tribunal is outside the United Kingdom at the time that the application for permission to appeal is made, the appropriate period is 38 days (10 working days, if the notice of decision is sent electronically).

5. A “working day” means any day except a Saturday or a Sunday, Christmas Day, Good Friday or a bank holiday.

6. The date when the decision is “sent’ is that appearing on the covering letter or covering email