Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2025-003292
(PA/67808/2023)

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:
On 8th February 2026

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE BRUCE

Between

BM (IRAQ)
(anonymity order made)
Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:

For the Appellant: Mr S. Martin, Counsel instructed by Jain Neil and Ruddy Solicitors
For the Respondent: Mr A. Mullen, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Anonymity

Unless and until a tribunal or court directs otherwise, the Appellant is granted anonymity. No report of these proceedings shall directly or indirectly identify him, any of his witnesses or any member of his family. This direction applies to, amongst others, both the Appellant and the Respondent. Failure to comply with this direction could lead to contempt of court proceedings

Heard at Melville St, Edinburgh on the 3 February 2026

DECISION AND REASONS
1. The Appellant is a national of Iraq born in 1994. He appeals with permission against the decision of the First-tier Tribunal to dismiss his appeal on protection and human rights grounds.
2. The background to this appeal is as follows. The Appellant states that he is from Sulaymaniyah in the Iraqi Kurdish Region (IKR). He states that in 2014 he was working in a meat packing plant owned by a prominent tribal and political leader called Shaikh Jafar. He realised that the workers at the plant were re-labelling meat that was past its sell-by date with new dates so that it could be sold as fresh. He reported this to an opposition politician who publicised it. The Appellant states that he was identified as the source of the leak, and that his manager then led a brutal assault on him by a number of people which resulted in his hospitalisation for about two months. During this time the Appellant’s family moved house, and when he was discharged from hospital he fled Iraq. The Appellant initially claimed asylum in Germany and spent about five years there. When he was facing removal he moved on to the UK and claimed protection here in December 2021. The Appellant avers that he lost his Iraqi identity card, the ‘CSID’, in Bulgaria in 2014.
3. The First-tier Tribunal did not believe any of this. It noted that when the Appellant had answered questions at his initial screening interview he had said that he was fleeing a family feud. The Tribunal found this to be inconsistent with the claim as it was subsequently elaborated, which was that the Appellant had exposed wrongdoing by a political/tribal leader. The Tribunal further found the claim to be “vague” and “unlikely” and considered his evidence to have lost contact with his family to “lack credibility”. In light of its own findings on the historical claim the Tribunal rejected the Appellant’s evidence about losing his CSID but in the alternative found there could be no risk to him from a lack of documentation: he would be returned to Sulaymaniyah, from where he could simply proceed to his civil registry and obtain new documentation with the support of his family.
4. Permission to appeal against the First-tier Tribunal decision was granted by Upper Tribunal Judge Ruddick on 17 July 2025, Judge Ruddick finding it arguable that there was a lack of reasons underpinning the First-tier Tribunal decision. I would broadly agree with that proposition. Saying something “lacks credibility” is afterall a finding, not a reason. For the reasons that follow, and upon more detailed consideration than Judge Ruddick was able to give this matter, I am not however satisfied that the First-tier Tribunal erred in any material way in its approach to this appeal.
5. The grounds of appeal first take issue with the Tribunal’s focus on what was said at the ‘screening interview’ (in fact entitled ‘Initial Contact and Asylum Registration Questionnaire). It has long been established in this jurisdiction that caution should be exercised before drawing adverse conclusions from omissions or a lack of elaboration in that interview, since its stated purpose is to gather basic biographical information and to identify – in brief – the basis upon which the claim is being made: see YL ( Rely on SEF ) China [2004] UKIAT 00145.
6. Here the Appellant said this at his screening interview, in response to being asked to briefly explain why he was claiming protection:
“There is a family feud with another tribe and the other tribe will kill me if I return I have got the bullet injuries to prove that”
7. Approximately two years after giving that answer, the Appellant was invited to his substantive asylum interview. At that interview he relayed to the officer the account he later relied upon before the First-tier Tribunal, ie in respect of the meat packing plant and Shaikh Jafar. He makes no mention at all of a family feud. Most explicitly, at Q110 he is asked “Can you tell me who you fear?” to which he responds “Shaikh Jafar and his group”. At Q111 the officer says “Do you fear anybody else” and he says “no only them. I got problem only with them”.
8. The Appellant was asked about this divergence in accounts at the hearing before the First-tier Tribunal. His evidence is captured at paragraph 14 of the First-tier Tribunal’s decision:
“When asked about the family feud at the hearing the appellant was very vague and said that his main issue was with Shaikh Jafar and that the family feud was between his father and his uncles and so they never had any contact with them….”
9. The First-tier Tribunal accordingly drew an adverse inference from this.
10. The Appellant now challenges that aspect of its reasoning, in essence on the principles in YL (China). The grounds suggest that given the tribal nature of politics in the IKR there is nothing inconsistent in the Appellant having described his issue with Shaikh Jafar as being a ‘family feud’. Whilst that is something of a stretch, there is a more obvious difficulty with that argument, since it is quite clearly not the explanation that the Appellant himself sought to give at the First-tier Tribunal hearing. As paragraph 14 illustrates, his explanation was that there was also a family feud within his own family, distinct from the conflict with Shaikh Jafar. There was then an inconsistency in his evidence about who and what he feared. Insofar as the grounds seek to challenge the weight to be attached to that inconsistency, that was a matter for the First-tier Tribunal with which, absent perversity, I am unable to interfere. For my own part, I am satisfied that there is a material inconsistency between what the Appellant has said at the two interviews that cannot reasonably be explained by reference to YL (China).
11. As Mr Martin very realistically accepted, grounds (ii) and (iii) largely stand and fall with the challenge to the credibility findings on the core of the claim. The submission that the Appellant is likely to be questioned by the PUK-affiliated Kurdish security services on arrival in Sulaymaniyah falls away if the claim itself is rejected as untrue. So too the separate argument about the credibility of his claim to have lost contact with his family in this time, although I should say that the documentation argument fails in any event given that the Appellant can simply make his way from Sulaymaniyah to his nearest civil registry, and there obtain an INID.

Decisions
12. The decision of the First-tier Tribunal is upheld and the appeal is dismissed.
13. There is an order for anonymity in this ongoing protection appeal.

Upper Tribunal Judge Bruce
Immigration and Asylum Chamber
3 February 2026