Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER Case No: UI-2025-003294
First-tier Tribunal No: PA/04741/2024
PA/57522/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

On 20th of May 2026

Before

DEPUTY UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE BAGRAL

Between

WK
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Ms J Carrington-Wolf, instructed by Seren Legal Practice
For the Respondent: Ms S McKenzie, Senior Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 26 January 2026

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 him. Failure to comply with this order could amount to a contempt of court.

DECISION AND REASONS
Introduction
1. The Appellant is a national of Iraq. He claimed asylum on 9 October 2021.
2. The Appellant’s case is that his father, was arrested and detained by the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) in Mosul in June 2020 during mass arrests after they took control of the area. On 18 September 2021, Kurdish police attended the family home, took the family to a police station, questioned them, and informed them that the Appellant’s father had been arrested. Two days later, on 20 September 2021, Kurdish authorities returned the father to the family home, and the Appellant, together with his parents and two siblings, fled that same day. During their flight, the Appellant overheard his father explain to his mother that he had been detained by the PMF and ordered to carry out a suicide bombing near the Kurdish border. He said that he had managed to contact the Kurdish authorities for help and that, although they initially did not believe him, they discovered that he had a bomb strapped to him, took him to a police station for two days, and then released him on bail. He also said that the PMF had threatened to kill his family if he did not carry out the bombing.
3. The Appellant says that he became separated from his family whilst travelling to the United Kingdom after they were placed in different lorries, at which point an agent took his belongings, including his mobile telephone, passport, Iraqi nationality certificate and CSID.
4. The Secretary of State refused the claim by letter dated 5 March 2024 and an appeal against that decision was dismissed by First-tier Tribunal Judge Boyes (“the Judge”) on 6 May 2025 and that is the decision now appealed to the Upper Tribunal.
The Grounds and Permission to Appeal
5. The Appellant relies on four grounds. He contends, first, that the Judge in substance required corroboration contrary to established principle; secondly, that the Judge failed properly to consider the objective evidence concerning Iraqi identity documentation and the Article 3 implications of return; thirdly, that the Judge departed from country guidance on returns to Iraq; and fourthly, that the Judge failed properly to engage with his subjective evidence concerning his family circumstances, his knowledge of his father’s detention, the family’s departure from Iraq, and the basis upon which he claimed to be at risk.
6. The Judge refused permission on 30 June 2025 and on renewed application permission to appeal was granted by Upper Tribunal Judge O’Callaghan on 20 August 2025. Grounds 1, 2 and 3 were regarded as arguable. In respect of Ground 4, it was observed that this ground advanced several distinct challenges as sub-grounds and that the merits of those ought to be considered by the Appellant’s representatives, but nonetheless permission was granted on all grounds given the low threshold for what is considered to the ‘arguable’.
7. There was no Rule 24 Response, but Ms McKenzie confirmed the Respondent opposed the appeal.
The Hearing
8. I observe that, by letter dated 14 January 2025, the Appellant’s representatives sought to adduce further evidence in the form of the Country Policy and Information Note: Iraq – Internal Relocation, Civil Documentation and Returns, published in October 2025. That material post‑dates the decision under appeal and was therefore not before the Judge. No application was made at the hearing to adduce this evidence. In any event, my task is to assess whether the Judge erred in law on the basis of the evidence that was before him at the time of his decision.
9. Both representatives made oral submissions.
10. On behalf of the Appellant, Ms Carrington‑Wolf relied on all grounds and submitted that they could be grouped under three broad themes: corroboration, feasibility of return, and failure properly to engage with the Appellant’s subjective evidence. She submitted, first, that the Judge’s approach at paragraph 31 was contradictory, in that he said corroboration was not required but nevertheless treated the absence of supporting evidence from family members, neighbours or documents as fatal to the claim and, in substance, required “something” to anchor the account in truth. She further submitted that the Judge wrongly sought evidence in relation to family tracing, notwithstanding the Appellant’s evidence in cross-examination that he had initiated contact with the British Red Cross and had an initial appointment booked, and that the Judge repeated the same error in refusing permission by referring to the need for “an anchor in the truth”.
11. As to feasibility of return, Ms Carrington‑Wolf submitted that the Judge had not applied the correct country guidance and had misunderstood the technical position concerning returns to Iraq. She submitted that, although a later CPIN was not before the Judge, it was consistent with the Appellant’s case that enforced return would be to Baghdad and not to an airport in the KRI. She argued that paragraph 39 of the decision, in stating that the Appellant could be returned to the nearest airport to where he lived, was inconsistent with the then-applicable guidance and with the Respondent’s own material. She further submitted that this error was material because it bore directly upon the feasibility of return, including onward movement through Baghdad and checkpoints, and upon the Judge’s treatment of the evidence concerning documentation.
12. In relation to paragraph 40, she submitted that the Judge had failed properly to engage with the background evidence showing that uptake of the INID was gradual, that the old CSID remained in use until 1 April 2024, and that it therefore remained feasible that the Appellant’s passport had been obtained using wet fingerprints rather than biometrics. She maintained that the Judge had thereby made adverse findings without considering all of the background evidence before him.
13. In relation to subjective evidence, Ms Carrington‑Wolf submitted that the Judge had made a series of adverse credibility findings without engaging with the Appellant’s witness statement as a whole. She argued that the Judge failed to have proper regard to the Appellant’s explanation for not knowing more about his father’s detention, namely that his father routinely worked away for extended periods; failed to engage with the Appellant’s evidence that, when the family left, he initially believed they were travelling within Kurdistan rather than fleeing; wrongly described the Appellant’s mother as being from a large family rather than a large tribe; and failed to consider the Appellant’s case that he would be at risk both from the PMF and from the Kurdish authorities because his father had been released on bail and had absconded. She submitted that those matters materially infected the credibility assessment and that the appeal should therefore be remitted to the First-tier Tribunal for a rehearing.
14. For the Respondent, Ms McKenzie submitted that the Judge had not materially erred in law. In relation to corroboration, she submitted that the Judge had not imposed any legal requirement of corroboration. She referred to TK (Burundi) v SSHD [2009] EWCA Civ 40 and MAH (Egypt) v SSHD [2023] EWCA Civ 216 and submitted that, where a claim had not met the requirements of paragraph 339L of the Immigration Rules, it was open to a judge to take into account the absence of supporting evidence. She submitted that the Judge had simply found the Appellant not credible and had not required corroboration as a matter of law.
15. As to the background evidence, Ms McKenzie submitted that the Appellant’s reliance on the material concerning the continued use of the CSID did not establish the separate proposition that his passport had been obtained using wet fingerprints. She submitted that the social media material relied upon did not address the passport issue or the use of wet fingerprints and that the Judge was therefore entitled to conclude, at paragraph 40, that there was no evidence supporting that assertion.
16. In relation to feasibility of return, Ms McKenzie submitted that paragraph 39 had to be read in the context of the Judge’s wider credibility findings and the background evidence then relied upon by the Respondent. She referred to the relevant CPIN material and submitted that the Judge’s observation that the Appellant could be returned to any airport was in line with the Respondent’s evidence. She accepted that the wording of paragraph 39 might be criticised if read in isolation, but submitted that any such criticism was immaterial because the Judge had separately found that the Appellant either had, or could obtain, his documentation, that he was not credible in claiming loss of family contact, and that he could reintegrate. She submitted that Ground 4 amounted in substance to no more than disagreement with the Judge’s factual evaluation and that the decision disclosed no material error of law.
17. In reply, Ms Carrington‑Wolf submitted that the Respondent’s reliance on the CPIN and its annexes did not answer the Appellant’s case that, at the relevant time, enforced return remained to Baghdad. She argued that the Respondent’s own material did not clearly establish safe forced returns to the KRI, did not distinguish adequately between voluntary and enforced returns, and in part supported the Appellant’s case that the earlier position remained operative. She maintained that the Judge’s approach to both return feasibility and documentation therefore remained flawed and that those errors fed into the wider adverse credibility assessment.

Consideration
18. I have considered the composite bundle filed by the Appellant’s representatives and the submissions of the representatives made at the hearing. For the reasons which follow, I am not satisfied that the Judge’s decision involved the making of a material error of law.
The First-tier Tribunal’s reasoning
19. The Judge’s central findings are contained at paragraphs 31 to 41 of the decision. In summary, the Judge found that there was no credible evidence supporting the Appellant’s account; that his knowledge of the central events was weak; that it was implausible that he would know so little about the circumstances of his father’s detention; that the account of the father’s release after being found with an explosive device was externally inconsistent and implausible; that there was no credible basis upon which the Appellant himself would be at risk; that his failure to claim asylum in France damaged his credibility; that he was not truthful in claiming loss of contact with his family; that he was not truthful in claiming not to have access to his documents; that he could be returned to Iraq; and that the report of Dr Giustozzi was without weight.
20. It is necessary to bear in mind, when considering the individual grounds, that the Judge’s adverse conclusion did not rest upon one point alone. It rested upon a series of interlocking credibility findings directed to the core narrative, the asserted risk, the Appellant’s account of his family circumstances, and his account of his documents.
Ground 1: corroboration
21. Ground 1 was developed by Ms Carrington‑Wolf by reference principally to paragraph 31 and 38 of the Judge’s decision, where the Judge said there was “no one piece of credible evidence…” which supported the claim; there was no confirmation from family members, neighbours or documentation, and further stated that he was “not saying that the appellant needs to corroborate his account but there must be something in light of the fact that his claims are not credible and implausible”. Ms Carrington‑Wolf submitted that the Judge thereby contradicted himself and, in substance, imposed a requirement of corroboration.
22. She further relied upon paragraph 38 of the decision, submitting that the Judge had there sought explicit corroboration in relation to family tracing. She submitted that the Appellant had explained in cross-examination that he had begun the process of contacting the British Red Cross; that the British Red Cross did not provide documentary confirmation of appointments; and that the Judge failed to have regard to that evidence.
23. I do not consider that this ground establishes a material error of law.
24. Paragraph 31 is robustly expressed. However, read fairly and in context, it does not disclose a legal misdirection requiring corroboration as a matter of law. The Judge expressly stated that he was not saying that the Appellant needed to corroborate his account. In my judgement, what the Judge was conveying was that, in circumstances where he regarded the claim as implausible and internally weak, there was no feature external to the Appellant’s own account capable of lending it support. That was, in substance, an observation about the state of the evidence in the context of his wider credibility assessment, rather than a misstatement of legal principle.
25. Further, the Judge’s rejection of the appellant’s claim was not founded merely or even principally upon an absence of external support. He gave a number of separate reasons for disbelieving the account: the Appellant’s lack of knowledge of central events; the implausibility of his account of his father’s detention and release; the absence of a credible basis upon which the Appellant himself would come to adverse attention; the failure to claim asylum in France; the rejection of the Appellant’s account as to loss of contact with his family; and the rejection of his account concerning his documentation. Those conclusions do not depend upon an impermissible insistence upon corroboration.
26. As to the British Red Cross point, I do not accept the criticism that the Judge failed to have regard to the Appellant’s evidence in cross-examination. In her oral submissions, Ms Carrington-Wolf referred to the Appellant’s evidence that he had contacted the British Red Cross and that the organisation did not provide documentary confirmation of appointments. However, she acknowledged that there was no evidence before the Judge to support that assertion, nor was any record of proceedings produced to confirm that what was said by the Appellant was overlooked by the Judge.
27. In any event, the Judge plainly had that evidence in mind, because he referred to the matter at paragraph 38. The Judge’s point was not that there was no evidence from the British Red Cross itself, but that there was no evidence, beyond the Appellant’s own assertion, that contact had in fact been made. Paragraph 38, read in context, was one component of a wider rejection of the Appellant’s claim to have been separated from his family, not the imposition of a formal evidential requirement.
28. For those reasons, Ground 1 is not made out.
Grounds 2 and 3: feasibility of return, return destination and documentation.
29. Ms Carrington-Wolf took issue with paragraphs 39 to 40 of the Judge’s decision. Therein the Judge said this:
“39. I do not accept that the appellant is without his documents. His claim is either that he left them when transferring vehicles or they were taken from him by the agent. The appellant’s claims for being in the UK are not credible. His credibility is weakened further still by his failure to claim asylum in France and I do not believe he does not have access to his documents. He either has them or has access to them. He can achieve them and can be returned to any airport in Iraq. Returns are now to any airport and not just Baghdad. The appellant can be returned to the nearest airport where he lives.
40. I do not accept the appellant’s claims that his fingerprints, when obtaining his passport, were wet ones. There is no credible or tangible evidence supporting this assertion that this would happen and especially so since 2015 biometric INID cards and passports have been issued. The appellant must be the only one I have come across that post 2015 had wet fingerprints taken for a biometric passport.”
30. I am prepared to accept, without finally deciding, that paragraph 39 of the Judge’s decision may have been expressed more broadly than was strictly necessary. The statement that returns were “now to any airport in Iraq and not just Baghdad” was put in unqualified terms and, it would have been preferable for the Judge to address that position with greater precision. That, in my judgment, is the fair way of characterising the criticism of paragraph 39. However, I am not satisfied that any such difficulty in the formulation of paragraph 39 is material to the outcome of the appeal.
31. The reason is this. The Appellant’s case on materiality depends upon a series of factual propositions: that he does not have his documents; that he cannot access replacement documentation; that he is not in contact with his family and cannot obtain assistance from them; and that he would therefore face insuperable or Article 3-level difficulty on return to Baghdad and in onward movement. The Judge rejected each of the premises underlying that submission. He did not accept that the Appellant was without his documents; he found that the Appellant either had them or had access to them; he did not accept that the Appellant was no longer in contact with his family; and he concluded that there were no obstacles to the Appellant’s reintegration in Iraq. Those findings were integral to the disposal of the appeal.
32. In those circumstances, even if paragraph 39 might have been framed with greater care, the precise point of arrival does not affect the result on the facts as the Judge found them. On those findings, the Appellant was a person who either possessed or could obtain documentation, who was not truthfully claiming loss of family contact, and who faced no real obstacle to reintegration. The asserted error concerning the airport of return does not unsettle those findings and does not therefore materially affect the outcome.
33. I turn to paragraph 40 and the “wet fingerprints” point. I am not persuaded that the Judge materially erred in his treatment of this issue. The background evidence relied upon by the Appellant, as summarised in the grounds, showed that the transition from the old CSID to the INID was not instantaneous and that the old CSID remained in use until April 2024. But that evidence did not necessarily establish the further proposition that the Appellant’s own passport must have been issued using wet fingerprints or that he would be unable, now, to obtain or access documentation. The argument advanced on behalf of the Appellant involved a chain of inference which the Judge was not bound to accept.
34. Nor did the Judge’s conclusion concerning documentation rest on paragraph 40 alone. Paragraph 39 contains the broader and more significant finding that the Appellant was not truthful in claiming to be without documents and that he either had them or had access to them. That conclusion was itself part of the Judge’s wider adverse credibility findings. In addition, the Judge rejected Dr Giustozzi’s report and gave reasons for doing so, finding that the report did not assist on the issues which the Judge had to decide. I am not satisfied that the treatment of that evidence discloses a material legal error.
35. Grounds 2 and 3 therefore do not succeed. To the extent that paragraph 39 may be open to criticism, I do not consider the point material in the light of the Judge’s other, dispositive findings.
Ground 4: alleged misunderstanding of the subjective evidence
36. Despite the observation made in the grant of permission Ground 4 was advanced by Ms Carrington‑Wolf in full and as a series of alleged failures by the Judge to engage with the evidence.
37. First, it was submitted that paragraph 32 of the decision - where the Judge said that the Appellant’s knowledge of events was weak and that his explanation for that lack of detail was not credible - failed to engage with the detailed account given by the Appellant in his witness statement concerning the family’s departure, travel to Turkey, movement in lorries, and separation from his family.
38. I do not accept that submission. The point made by the Judge at paragraphs 32 and 33 was not that the Appellant had given no detail about his journey from Iraq to the United Kingdom. The Judge’s concern was directed to the Appellant’s limited knowledge of the central matters upon which his protection claim rested: what had happened to his father, why his father had been detained, how matters came to a head, and why the Appellant himself would be at risk. A detailed account of travel by taxi, bus or lorry, or the circumstances of onward movement through Turkey and Europe, did not meet the difficulty identified by the Judge. It was therefore open to the Judge to conclude that the Appellant’s limited knowledge of the central narrative undermined his credibility notwithstanding that he could describe his route of travel.
39. Secondly, Ms Carrington‑Wolf submitted that paragraph 38 of the decision referred to the Appellant’s mother as coming from a “large family”, whereas the Appellant’s witness statement referred to her as being from a “large tribe”. I accept that the Judge may have described that aspect of the evidence imprecisely. However, I do not consider that point to be material. The central reasoning at paragraph 38 was that the Judge did not accept the Appellant’s claim to have become wholly separated from family support, and was not persuaded by the explanation given as to the absence of contact or tracing. Whether the maternal background was described as a large family or a large tribe does not materially affect the validity of that reasoning.
40. Thirdly, it was submitted that paragraph 36 failed to engage with the Appellant’s case that he would be wanted by the PMF and by the authorities, and that the Judge failed to take proper account of the proposition that family members can in principle form a particular social group. Again, I am unable to accept that submission. The difficulty for the Appellant is that this submission depends upon acceptance of the core factual narrative concerning his father, the PMF, the explosive device, and the threats said to have been made to the family. The Judge rejected that narrative. Once he had done so, it was open to him to conclude that there was no tangible or credible reason why the Appellant himself would be at risk. Paragraph 36 must be read against the backdrop of the wider adverse credibility findings already made.
41. Fourthly, it was submitted that paragraph 33 involved a misunderstanding of the Appellant’s case because the Appellant had said that his father frequently worked away and that his absence from home was the norm; the Judge was therefore said to have speculated in finding it incredible that the Appellant did not know more about what had happened. I do not accept that this discloses an error of law. The Judge was plainly aware of the Appellant’s explanation that his father was accustomed to working away. He nevertheless found it implausible that, over such a prolonged period, the Appellant would know so little about what had happened or why his father had disappeared. That was an evaluative finding open to him. It was not a failure to engage with the explanation; it was a rejection of it.
42. Fifthly, Ms Carrington‑Wolf submitted that the Judge misunderstood the Appellant’s evidence at paragraph 32 by proceeding as though the Appellant had claimed all along to know that his father was imprisoned, whereas his evidence was that he did not understand what had occurred until after the family had left. Again, I do not consider that this point assists the Appellant. Read fairly, paragraph 32 was directed to the Judge’s view that the Appellant’s overall knowledge of the events was inadequate and implausibly limited. The Judge’s reasoning was that, on the Appellant’s own account, the family’s circumstances were grave and it was not credible that he would remain so uninformed. That was a finding of plausibility, not a misunderstanding of the chronology so material as to vitiate the decision.
43. In my view, Ground 4 does not identify a failure by the Judge to understand the Appellant’s case. What it identifies is disagreement with the Judge’s evaluation of that case. The Judge heard the oral evidence, considered the witness statement, and gave adequate reasons for rejecting the Appellant’s account. I am not satisfied that the criticisms advanced under Ground 4 disclose a material error of law.
Conclusion
44. The grant of permission properly recognised that some of the points raised by the Appellant were arguable. Arguability, however, is not the test at this stage. Having considered all of the points advanced in the written and oral submissions, I am not persuaded that the decision of the First-tier Tribunal involved the making of a material error of law.
45. It follows that the decision of the First-tier Tribunal shall stand.

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

R. Bagral
Deputy Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber
6 May 2026