Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2025-003256

First-tier Tribunal No: PA/62387/2023
LP/02903/2025

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:
On 5th of December 2025

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE HIRST

Between

FA
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr Wilcox, instructed by Brit Solicitors
For the Respondent: Ms Kerr, 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 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 appeals from the decision of the First-tier Tribunal promulgated on 8 May 2025 dismissing his appeal on protection and human rights grounds.
2. For the reasons set out below, I have concluded that the First-tier Tribunal’s decision did not contain a material error of law and I therefore dismiss the Appellant’s appeal.
Background
3. The Appellant is a national of Bangladesh. On 28 April 2022 he applied for asylum in the UK. His claim was refused on 10 November 2023 and the Appellant’s appeal against that decision came before the First-tier Tribunal at a hearing on 7 May 2025.
4. The basis of the Appellant’s claim was his political opinion as a supporter of the student wing of the Bangladesh National Party (BNP). He claimed that he was the target of false criminal charges in relation to incidents in 2018 and 2021 and that his family had received threats from Awami League supporters.
5. The First-tier Tribunal dismissed the appeal, rejecting both the Appellant’s account of events in Bangladesh and his claim to sur place political activity in the UK. The judge found that documents relating to the Bangladeshi court cases were not reliable and rejected a letter from a Bangladeshi advocate, Md Asifur Rahman. The Appellant’s Article 8 claim was also dismissed.
The Appellant’s grounds of appeal
6. Permission to appeal was granted by the First-tier Tribunal on 15 July 2025 on four grounds:
a. Ground 1 – material errors of fact: The First-tier Tribunal had erred by stating that the Appellant’s court documents had not been certified by a UK-approved translator and had wrongly stated that the Zia Parishad organisation to which the Appellant belonged in the UK had only 29 members, when that was simply the committee;
b. Ground 2 – court documents and verification report: The First-tier Tribunal had erred in fact when stating that Asifur Rahman had not sent the report, when the email address from which the report was sent corresponded closely with that on his Bar ID and all other contact details were the same. Further, the Tribunal erred in stating that the letter did not provide further detail of the verification process, when the advocate had gone into detail in his letter;
c. Ground 3 – newspaper articles: The First-tier Tribunal erred in concluding that no weight could be attached to the news reports as self-serving, without considering the contents or source of the reports themselves;
d. Ground 4 – Facebook evidence and photographs: The First-tier Tribunal erred in considering the Facebook evidence, by failing to consider the numerous posts and evidence of threats submitted by the Appellant.
Discussion and decision
7. The basis of the Appellant’s claim was that he was at risk on return to Bangladesh because (i) he faced prosecution on false criminal charges in respect of which there were outstanding arrest warrants against him; and (ii) supporters of the Awami League would harm him for his online political activity in the UK.
8. A key part of the Appellant’s evidence was documents relating to the outstanding arrest warrants and court case. Those included a First Information Report (FIR) and arrest warrant, together with a verification report by a Bangladeshi barrister, Mr Rahman, confirming that cases with the reference numbers given did exist.
9. At paragraph 27 of the decision, the First-tier Tribunal judge stated that
“All of the Court documents which the Appellant relies upon, in respect of both cases from 2018 and 2021, have been certified in Bangladesh. The documents have not been certified by a UK approved translator. This reduces the weight which can be attached to the documents.”
In fact, the documents had been translated by a UK-approved translator and a certificate to that effect was in the Appellant’s bundle.
10. However, the lack of a UK-certified translation was not the only reason why the judge gave limited weight to the Bangladeshi court documents. He also rejected the “transit evidence” showing how the documents came to be in the Appellant’s possession and gave consideration to the background evidence demonstrating that forgery of court and official documents was prevalent in Bangladesh. The judge’s consideration of the documents also has to be seen in the context of his findings as a whole, including his rejection of the Appellant’s account of his BNP membership and activity which he found was not consistent with other evidence; those findings were entirely open to the judge for the reasons given. The judge’s error of fact in relation to the translation of the court documents was therefore not material to his conclusion on the Appellant’s asylum claim as a whole.
11. There was no error in relation to the Zia Parishad organisation. The Appellant’s evidence included a list headed “Zia Parishad UK” which consisted of 29 names, with a statement on the side of the page indicating that “Committee has been approved for three years”. 25 of the 29 names had titles but four names were listed as “General Member”. As Mr Wilcox acknowledged in submissions, there was no evidence before the First-tier Tribunal indicating that there was a wider membership to the organisation and the judge was in my view entitled to conclude that the list represented the entirety of the Zia Parishad membership rather than simply the committee.
12. In relation to Ground 2, the First-tier Tribunal considered Mr Rahman’s report at paragraph 29. The judge noted that although the letter on chambers-headed notepaper contained a Hotmail email address, the letter had been sent to the Appellant from a Yahoo email address which appeared to relate to a different name; further, Mr Rahman’s Bar registration details included a Gmail address which did not match either the chambers email address nor the Yahoo email address, and Mr Rahman had not supplied a formal ID document such as his passport. The judge further considered that Mr Rahman had not provided detail concerning the specific charges brought against the Appellant. For those reasons the judge attached limited weight to Mr Rahman’s evidence, noting at the conclusion of the paragraph “In doing so I have also taken account of the Appellant’s lack of credibility for all the reasons foregoing and which I will continue to set out”.
13. On balance, I consider that the judge was entitled to place limited weight on Mr Rahman’s report. Mr Rahman’s identity as a barrister and advocate was key to the weight to be given to his verification evidence. The judge was entitled to consider that the lack of consistency in the various email addresses used (which did not, contrary to the assertion in the grounds of appeal, match that on his Bar ID) and the lack of other proof of identity raised concerns as to whether the writer of the letter was in fact Mr Rahman and qualified as claimed. Although the letter provided details of the steps taken to verify the case references, it did not provide any detail as to whether the proceedings were actively being pursued, nor what stage the proceedings had reached. The weight to be given to the letter was primarily a matter for the judge; his conclusion were not ‘rationally insupportable’ on the evidence before him.
14. Ground 3 asserts that the First-tier Tribunal judge erred at paragraphs 30 and 38 by rejecting the news reports supplied by the Appellant without considering the contents or sources of the reports. The grounds of appeal do not identify how the reports were relevant to the Appellant’s case and their relevance is unclear when the documents themselves are considered: they do not demonstrate politically-motivated violence of the type feared by the Appellant. Although the judge did not expressly consider the reports, he was not required to if they were not relevant to the Appellant’s case. Any error was not material to the Tribunal’s decision on the appeal.
15. In relation to Ground 4, the Appellant asserts that the First-tier Tribunal judge failed to consider the evidence of numerous posts by the Appellant on Facebook and evidence of threats made to him by others. I do not accept that contention. The Facebook evidence provided by the Appellant consisted of 12 screenshots, of which 8 were posts by the Appellant. None of the Appellant’s posts had been reacted to by more than 21 people. The grounds of appeal refer to evidence of a threat to the Appellant by a Mr Pinaki Bhattacharya with 45,000 followers, but the grounds do not provide a page reference and the posts in the appeal bundle do not appear to contain such a threat. Although there are a number of threats from a Shah Mujahid Ahmed the documents do not show that there was any reaction to those threats, nor how many followers Mr Ahmed had; Mr Ahmed did however have 34 mutual friends with the Appellant. Similarly, a threatening message from Abir Hussin did not attract any reactions. There was no evidence that any of the posts were viewable by the public. On the evidence, it was entirely open to the First-tier Tribunal judge to conclude that the Appellant was not an active social media follower and that he had not attracted attention from the Bangladeshi authorities. There was no error in the Tribunal’s approach or conclusions.
16. I therefore conclude, for the reasons set out above, that although the judge erred in minor factual respects, there was no material error in the First-tier Tribunal’s decision and I decline to set it aside.

Notice of Decision
The decision of the First-tier Tribunal did not involve the making of an error of law and I decline to set it aside.
The Appellant’s appeal is dismissed.

L Hirst

Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

28 November 2025