Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2025-003373
UI-2025-003374

First-tier Tribunal No: PA/61996/2023
LP/01281/2025
PA/51112/2024
LP/12990/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:
On 29 September 2025

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE BLUNDELL

Between

(1) ANPV
(2) SAPV
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellants
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellants: Mr Chowdhury Rahman of counsel, instructed by Direct Access
For the Respondent: Mr Mahdi Parvar, Senior Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 25 September 2025

Order Regarding Anonymity

Pursuant to rule 14 of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008, the appellants are granted anonymity. No-one shall publish or reveal any information, including the name or address of the appellants, likely to lead members of the public to identify the appellants. Failure to comply with this order could amount to a contempt of court. This order is made because the appellants are asylum seekers and the need to protect their safety outweighs the presumption in favour of open justice.

DECISION AND REASONS
1. The appellants are sisters of Honduran nationality, born on 1 January 1996 and 20 January 1990 respectively. They appeal with the permission of First-tier Tribunal Judge Bowen against the decision of First-tier Tribunal Judge Hussain, who dismissed their appeals against the respondent’s refusal of their claims for international protection.
Background
2. The appellants arrived in the United Kingdom by air on 14 June 2022. They had travelled via Spain. They claimed asylum on arrival at Heathrow Terminal 5. Screening interviews took place on that day. Substantive interviews took place in October 2023.
3. The appellants stated that they had been targeted by a powerful gang named Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13). The gang wanted the appellants to be their “women” and had threatened the appellants and their families that they would be killed if they did not accede to the request. The appellants had sought assistance from the police and other agencies but no assistance had been forthcoming. They therefore decided to leave the country. A family friend said that the gang had been looking for them after their departure.
4. The respondent refused the applications for asylum on 13 November 2023. She accepted that the claims potentially engaged the Refugee Convention. She considered that the situation in Honduras was similar to that in El Salvador, as considered in EMAP (Gang Violence, Convention Reason) [2022] UKUT 335 (IAC), and she accepted that the Honduran authorities would be unable to provide protection against MS-13. She did not accept, however, that the appellants had genuinely been targeted by the gang. That was because she considered the accounts to be inconsistent and unsupported by the documentary evidence, and because the appellants had not sought to claim asylum en route to the UK, in Spain. In the alternative, the respondent considered that the appellants could relocate internally so as to avoid any threat from MS-13 in their home area. The remainder of the letters dealt with non-protection matters which are not relevant in this appeal.
The Appeals to the First-tier Tribunal
5. The appellants filed and served additional evidence in support of their appeals but it did not persuade the respondent to alter her stance. In formal reviews which were completed in June and August 2024, the respondent did not accept that the appellants had been targeted by MS-13 and reiterated her conclusion that internal relocation would be viable and reasonable.
6. The appeals to the First-tier Tribunal were linked and heard together by the judge on 14 May 2025. The appellants were represented by Mr Rahman, as they were before me. The Secretary of State was represented by a Presenting Officer (not Mr Parvar). They adopted their statements and were cross-examined at some length by the Presenting Officer. The judge heard closing submissions from the advocates before reserving his decision.
7. The judge’s reserved decision spans twelve pages of single-spaced type and I shall not attempt a comprehensive precis. It suffices to note as follows. The judge set out a summary of the reasons given for refusing the claims at [8]-[28]. At [29]-[42], he recounted evidence given at the hearing. At [46], having directed himself on the law and the burden and standard of proof, the judge embarked upon his findings of fact. They were, in summary, as follows:
(i) At [49], the judge did not accept that the appellants were the targets of adverse attention from a criminal gang in Honduras. There was no evidence that the individuals concerned were affiliated to MS-13. The text messages made no reference to the gang and it was unclear how their pursuer had obtained their numbers. It was also unclear to the judge why the focus of the attention had been on the first appellant.
(ii) At [50]-[51], The judge noted that the appellants had provided translated copies of complaints which they had been made to various agencies in Honduras but none of those documents made reference to MS-13.
(iii) At [52], the judge considered the actions of the appellants – who had fled “thousands of miles” rather than trying to relocate within Honduras – to be incredible. Like the respondent, he also considered their credibility to be damaged by their failure to claim asylum in Spain.
(iv) Also at [52], the judge concluded that the appellants could relocate so as to avoid any threat from MS-13. They were educated individuals with a history of employment and had not advanced any reason why they could not relocate.
(v) At [53], the judge returned to the subject of credibility, noting that the appellants claimed to know that they were still sought by MS-13 because a neighbour had told their father. He had come to the UK in November 2022 but there was no evidence of this contact from the neighbour. The judge considered that to be “astonishing”.
8. The judge summarised his findings at [54]:
For all the reasons given above, I have come to the conclusion that the appellants have not demonstrated firstly, that they were the subject of adverse attention in the hands of a gang whilst in Honduras and secondly, that they have either an objectively well-founded or subjective fear of being harmed by a criminal gang. If I am wrong in my findings above, I note that the appellants have not adequately explained why they could not relocate internally to a place where they would not be recognised by the gang.
9. The appellants’ appeals against the refusal of asylum were dismissed for those reasons. The remainder of the decision dealt with residual claims which I need not mention.
The Appeals to the Upper Tribunal
10. For reasons which I will explain at the end of this decision, it is necessary to set out in full the grounds of appeal which Mr Rahman settled on 5 July 2025. (I have taken these from pp5-7 of the composite bundle which was uploaded to the e-filing system by Mr Rahman at 1331 on 22 September 2025.)
Ground 1: Failure to Adequately Assess Credibility considering Country Conditions. Para: [46], [48], [49], [50], [51], [54]
(i) The Judge erred in discounting the A’s claim that Maras gang members were not named in complaints due to police fear, labelling it “implausible” ([50]).
(ii) This assessment ignores objective country evidence and guidance in MN and others (Art 15(c)) Honduras CG [2016] UKUT 00450 (IAC), which documents systemic fear and impunity.
(iii) Furthermore, the Judge overlooked trauma-informed principles as per HK v SSHD [2006] EWCA Civ 1037, particularly when evaluating fragmented or emotionally charged testimony ([49], [54]).
Ground 2: Error of Law in Approach to Documentary Evidence. Para: [33], [36], [49], [50], [51]
(i) The Tribunal dismissed WhatsApp evidence and certified translations due to absence of originals ([33], [49], [51]), despite oral evidence from [ANPV] that originals were submitted electronically.
(ii) No attempt was made to resolve this evidentiary inconsistency or assess internal consistency and probative value, breaching MA (Somalia) v SSHD [2010] EWCA Civ 426.
(iii) At [49], the Judge’s conclusion that these documents "do not take the A’s case any further" lacks reasoned engagement with the content and corroborative strength.
Ground 3: Misapplication of Section 8 – Failure to Consider Conduct in the Round. Para: [34], [40], [41], [52], [53], [54]
(i) The Judge treated the failure to claim asylum in Spain as determinative of credibility ([53]), contrary to Section 8(4) of the 2004 Act and guidance in YH (Eritrea) [2008] UKAIT 00070 and R (YH) v SSHD [2010] EWCA Civ 116.
(ii) No meaningful weight was given to the appellants’ explanation: their fear of diaspora exposure and belief that Spain was unsafe.
(iii) The Tribunal failed to apply JT (Cameroon) v SSHD [2008] EWCA Civ 878, which requires consideration of plausible, fear-based decisions under threat.
Ground 4: Inadequate Consideration of Internal Relocation. Para: [52], [54]
(i) The Judge suggested relocation was reasonable due to education/employment background ([52], [54]) but failed to apply the "unduly harsh" test from SC (Protection) [2020] UKSC 9 or feasibility standards in AM (Afghanistan) [2007] EWCA Civ 131.
(ii) No evaluation was made of anonymity risks, continued gang pursuit, or gender based exploitation, factors material to assessing realistic internal relocation.
Ground 5: Failure to Properly Consider Risk under Article 3 ECHR. Para: [48][54]
(i) Across paragraphs [48] to [54], the Tribunal relied on the absence of recent contact with the gang to dismiss risk, ignoring EM (Returnees) Zimbabwe CG [2011] UKUT 98 (IAC) and HH v Italy [2012] UKSC 25, which affirm that cumulative past harm can sustain ongoing risk.
(ii) The Judge failed to assess gender-based vulnerability, familial intimidation, and lack of protection in a structured Article 3 framework.
Ground 6: Procedural Fairness Breaches. Para: [33], [36], [39], [54]
(i) The Tribunal dismissed oral testimony regarding gang naming and police omission without engaging with the explanation that officers acted out of fear ([33], [36]).
(ii) Speculative reasoning at [39] (“How could the gang possibly know…”) disregards community accounts and third-party corroboration.
(iii) Witness testimony from neighbours and church members was ignored without reasoned dismissal ([39]), breaching the duty in MK (Pakistan) [2013] UKUT 641 (IAC) and SM (Iran) [2005] UKAIT 00116.
11. Judge Bowen considered that ground one was arguable and he was persuaded by reference to Rai & DAM (grounds of appeal; limited grant of permission) [2025] UKUT 150 (IAC) that he should not limit the grounds which could be argued before the Upper Tribunal.
Submissions
12. Mr Rahman indicated that the focus of his oral submissions would be on the first two grounds of appeal. He submitted that the judge had failed to assess the appellants’ credibility in light of the country evidence which was available to him. The Secretary of State’s decision had made reference to her own country information and there had been further reference at the hearing to the Country Information and Policy Notes (CPIN) on El Salvador and Honduras. The same gangs were operating in both countries and the background material showed how powerful the gangs had become but the judge had no regard to that.
13. The appellants were both young women. They were vulnerable and had acted to save their lives by leaving the country in the face of a serious threat from a powerful gang. The judge had focused on the absence of the original Whatsapp messages but to do so was unfair and procedurally improper because the appellants said that they had submitted those messages to the Home Office and they had in any event provided certified translations of those messages. Had the judge evaluated the evidence fairly and properly, he would have found the appellants to be credible witnesses who were at risk in Honduras, and the proper course was for the decision of the FtT to be set aside and the appeals allowed.
14. Mr Parvar submitted that there was no error of law in the decision of the FtT. Whilst he accepted that the judge had made no reference to either CPIN in his decision, it was not clear how the absence of such a reference was even relevant to the findings that the judge had reached. This was not a case in which the judge had found the actions of the appellants or others to be implausible without considering the country information which bore on that question; there were different and cogent reasons for finding the appellants’ account to be untrue. It was not enough to “latch on” to the absence of reference to the background material; it had to be shown that it had an impact on the sustainability of the findings made. The judge had been troubled, and justifiably so, by the absence of reference to MS-13 in any of the supporting material and by the absence of the original Whatsapp messages. These points had been made by the respondent in the letters of refusal and the appellants’ answers were given belatedly and unsatisfactory.
15. Mr Rahman responded briefly, submitting that the judge had erred procedurally in failing to ask whether he should give the appellants an opportunity to download the originals of the Whatsapp messages and provide them to the tribunal.
16. I reserved my decision at the end of the submissions.
Analysis
17. Under challenge in this appeal are findings of fact made by a specialist judge of the First-tier Tribunal. The need for appellate restraint in such circumstances has been underlined by the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court on numerous occasions over the last decade. It is perhaps necessary to make reference to only one such recent decision in which the principles were helpfully summarised. At [55] of QY (Vietnam) v SSHD [2025] EWCA Civ 607, Dingemans LJ said:
It was also common ground that appeal courts should not interfere with judgments by trial judges just because the appellate court takes a different view of the facts. Findings of fact made by primary fact finders should not be set aside by the appellate court, unless the appellate court is bound to act. The trial judge should "give his reasons in sufficient detail to show the parties, and if need be [the appellate court] the principles on which he has acted and the reasons that have led him to his decision", see Fage at paragraph 115. There is no duty to refer to every argument of counsel, and the mere fact that a judge does not mention a piece of evidence does not mean that he overlooked it, see Volpi at paragraph 57. These principles apply to the FTT and Upper Tribunal, see generally Terzaghi v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA Civ 2017; [2020] Imm AR 461, particularly given that rights of appeal from the FTT to the Upper Tribunal are limited to errors of law. Findings of fact made by FTT judges should not readily be set aside.
18. Mr Rahman submits that the judge did not make any reference to the background material. That is correct, as Mr Parvar quite properly acknowledged. The real question is whether he was required to do so or whether his failure to do so had any impact on his credibility findings.
19. Country information plays an important role in refugee status determination. It can inform findings of credibility. It is often centre stage in the assessment of whether an individual can relocate internally or whether they can receive a sufficiency of protection in their country of origin. But country information does not always play an important role in the assessment of credibility. An asylum seeker might give an account which is wholly devoid of relevant detail, or which is inconsistent in almost every material particular. In those circumstances, there are other indicators that the asylum seeker’s account might not be a truthful one.
20. Where it is said that an individual’s account is externally inconsistent, or that it is implausible, country information is often very important indeed. As Keene LJ explained at [25]-[27] of Y v SSHD [2006] EWCA Civ 1223, it is necessary in considering such a submission to look through the spectacles provided by the country information in order to assess the plausibility of the account which is proffered. Where, foe example, it is said that a Turkish Kurd remained of interest to the authorities despite his release from detention on multiple occasions, the judge must don the spectacles provided by the country information in order to assess the truthfulness of his claim.
21. As Mr Parvar submitted, the judge’s findings in this case fell into the former, not the latter category. He did not find any part of the appellants’ account implausible in the context of what is known to occur in Honduras. There was no dispute that the MS-13 gang and another were extremely powerful in Honduras, as they are in neighbouring El Salvador. That was accepted in terms by the respondent in the refusal letter. She also accepted that the authorities would be unable to offer protection against the gangs because they are so powerful. The judge was evidently aware of that part of the refusal letter, since he made reference to it at [47] of his decision.
22. The judge’s concerns as to the appellants’ credibility were instead based largely on the fact that none of the documents they had submitted made reference to MS-13. There were messages from their supposed pursuer which made no reference to gang membership. More importantly, perhaps, there were complaints the appellants had apparently made to the police and various other agencies, and none of those documents made any mention of MS-13 either. This was a point taken squarely by the respondent in the refusal letter and pursued by the Presenting Officer in cross-examination: [31-[32] and [36]-[37] refer. The judge heard the appellants’ evidence on this point and considered the challenge which was made by the respondent to be a cogent one. There was no need to consider that submission through the spectacles provided by the country information; the name of MS-13 was just missing from all of the supporting documentation, and that was rationally held by the judge to be a matter of concern.
23. As Mr Parvar also submitted, the remaining credibility points taken by the judge were not ones which could have been different if the country information had been considered in more detail in the decision. The judge was concerned that the appellants had fled to Europe rather than trying to relocate within their own country, and that they had not sought to claim asylum in Spain. He also noted that there was an “astonishing” lack of evidence about the more recent threats which had been communicated to the appellants’ father. The cogency of that point is underscored by the fact that the appellant’s father was in the United Kingdom at the time of the hearing before the FtT, yet the judge was told by Mr Chowdhury that there was no intention to call him as a witness: [35] refers. Whilst there is obviously no requirement for corroborative evidence in this context, it remains legitimate for a judge to draw on the absence of evidence which might readily have been obtained: MAH (Egypt) v SSHD [2023] EWCA Civ 216; [2023] Imm AR 713, at [86], and TK (Burundi) v SSHD [2009] EWCA Civ 40, at [16].
24. The various planks of the judge’s assessment of the appellants’ account were not therefore of a type which required him to take account (or to take more account) of the country information. He plainly understood that MS-13 was a powerful gang in Honduras and he proceeded on that basis but he considered various parts of the accounts to be incredible for the reasons that he gave. Nothing more was required of him, and I do not accept Mr Rahman’s principal submission.
25. Mr Rahman said little or nothing about the remaining grounds of appeal but I propose to address those grounds in any event, albeit quite concisely.
26. The judge was entitled to hold the absence of the original Whatsapp messages against the appellants for the reasons that he gave. This was a point taken by the respondent in the refusal letter and, as Mr Parvar noted, the answer to it came very late in the day. The appellants stated in their oral evidence before the FtT that they had in fact sent those messages (screenshots, as I understand it) to the respondent by email. As the judge noted at [49], however, they did not adduce any proof of service by email. He was entitled to reject that evidence, and to attach limited weight to the translations in the absence of the original messages. Mr Rahman suggested at one point before me that the judge should have considered whether to invite the appellants to submit the original Whatsapp messages after the hearing. There is no merit in that submission; the appellants were represented by counsel, and no such suggestion was made to the judge. It was not incumbent on him to make that suggestion of his own volition, nor was it unfair for him not to do so. The hearing was the first and last day of the show; it was not a dress rehearsal, as Lewison LJ has previously said. Ground two is not made out.
27. Mr Rahman was quite wrong in his ground three to suggest that the judge had treated the failure to claim asylum in Spain as “determinative of credibility”. Any proper reading of the decision shows that not to be correct. The judge treated the failure to claim asylum in Spain as relevant to the appellants’ credibility, since he considered that there was no proper explanation for that failure. He took into account the fact that the appellants’ native language is Spanish and he did not think it likely that they would be pursued to Spain by MS-13. The process of reasoning was entirely sound and in accordance with what was said in JT (Cameroon) v SSHD [2008] EWCA Civ 878; [2009] 1 WLR 1411. Ground three is not made out.
28. The judge’s consideration of internal relocation was brief but adequate when his reasons are considered as a whole. As a specialist judge of the First-tier Tribunal, he would naturally have been aware that the test is two-fold, requiring consideration of the safety of relocation and the reasonableness of that step. He noted that the appellants were well-educated young women and that they had not advanced any reasons why they could not relocate. This was not a throw-away argument made by a Presenting Officer for the first time in submissions (see Daoud v SSHD [2005] EWCA Civ 755); it was a point which had been taken in the letter of refusal, yet the appellants provided no reasons of substance as to why relocation would be unduly harsh. The brevity of the judge’s reasoning on this issue was the product of the little that he had been given. Ground four is not made out.
29. The judge’s reasoning was not based solely or even largely on the absence of recent contact from the gang; he was principally not satisfied that any threat that had been made was even from the gang. I regret that I do not understand the statement in the grounds that “cumulative past harm can sustain ongoing risk”. And I do not see anything in the papers before the FtT to suggest that this case was argued as one in which “gender-based vulnerability” or “familial intimidation” crossed the Article 3 threshold; the case was put on the basis that the appellants were at risk from MS-13. Ground five is not made out.
30. It is said in ground six that the judge took no account of the oral evidence that MS-13 were not named in the documents because the authors were in fear of the gang. That assertion is simply wrong on the face of the decision because the judge considered and rejected that part of the evidence at [51]. It is also said in this ground that the judge speculated impermissibly but the point he made about the gang being able to find the appellants’ phone number even after it had been changed was not impermissible speculation; it was sensible, reasoned analysis. The final point taken in the grounds was that the judge had ignored “witness testimony from neighbours and church members”. That point is also simply wrong. There was no witness testimony from neighbours and church members, and the absence of that evidence was something which the judge was entitled to hold against the appellants. Ground six is not made out.
31. It follows that nothing said by Mr Rahman orally or in writing establishes an error of law on the part of the judge and the appeal must be dismissed.
Notice of Decision
The decision of the First-tier Tribunal does not contain errors of law such that it should be set aside. The appeals to the Upper Tribunal are therefore dismissed.

Mark Blundell

Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

29 September 2025

Postscript – Inaccuracies in the Grounds of Appeal
32. I have reproduced the grounds of appeal in their entirety above and I shall now explain why it was necessary to do so. It will already be apparent from some of my analysis above that the grounds of appeal make some assertions about the judge’s decision which are simply incorrect. He did engage with the appellants’ evidence that the Honduran authorities were scared of MS-13, for example, and there was no evidence from neighbours and church members which was ignored by the judge. The grounds might be thought to be misleading in those respects, but there is a much more significant problems with the grounds.
33. Twelve authorities are cited in the grounds. When I came to read the papers in this appeal, I was concerned that some of those authorities did not exist and that others did not support the propositions of law for which they were cited in the grounds. When the appeal was called on before me yesterday, therefore, I directed that Mr Rahman should return to his chambers in Lincoln’s Inn and provide me with printed copies of the authorities, with the relevant paragraphs of those authorities side-lined. Given that Mr Rahman had settled the grounds in July 2025, and given that he was instructed to appear before me to make submissions on his own grounds, he should have been in a position to take me through the authorities immediately, but I gave him four hours in which to comply with the direction.
34. Mr Rahman returned with a number of authorities at 2pm, and I asked him to take me to the authorities in order, so that he could identify the passages which were said to support the legal propositions in the grounds. He was unable to find some of the authorities. Of the authorities which he was able to find, there was not one which offered any support for the propositions of law which were set out in the grounds. On a number of occasions, Mr Rahman said that he had made a mistake and that he had intended, instead of citing one authority, to cite a completely different one. Often, however, the authority he said that he had intended to cite was also irrelevant to the proposition of law set out in the grounds.
35. There were a number of occasions on which Mr Rahman was unable to locate on Bailii electronic copies of the authorities which he had provided in hard copy. Throughout, it seemed that he was unfamiliar with Bailii or any other legal search engine. Mr Rahman was consistently unable to grasp the point that it was the ratio decidendi of the case to which I should be taken; oftentimes he took me to parts of the argument, or even to the facts of the case. At the risk of stating the obvious, counsel who comes to argue any case should be able to identify the salient paragraphs of the authorities cited in the grounds of appeal, but that is all the more so when the grounds of appeal were recently drafted by the same member of the Bar. Mr Rahman was however so unfamiliar with the cases, even after the additional four hours he was given, that the process of going through the authorities in an attempt to locate the relevant passages took more than two hours.
36. I will now consider the first ten authorities cited in the grounds, and what was said by Mr Rahman about those actual or fictitious cases in his submissions.
MN and others (Art 15(c)) Honduras CG [2016] UKUT 00450 (IAC)
37. This case does not exist. There is no country guidance decision on Honduras. Mr Rahman produced two authorities with the name MN v SSHD.
38. The first was a country guidance decision concerning members of the Ahmadi faith in Pakistan: MN & Ors (Ahmadis – country conditions – risk) Pakistan CG [2012] UKUT 389 (IAC), although Mr Rahman produced the unreported version of the decision. Unsurprisingly, Mr Rahman was not able to take me to anything in that Pakistani country guidance decision which supported the assertion in ground one that there was “systemic fear and impunity” in Honduras. He sought to assert that [55] and [123] were relevant to what was said in ground one but [55] recounts the evidence of an expert witness and [123] contains guidance on the assessment of risk for practising Ahmadis on return to Pakistan.
39. The second MN decision was not even a report of a judgment; it was an interim order made by Lane J in MN & Ors v SSHD CO/2388/2023. Mr Rahman did not take me to this order. I cannot understand why it was even printed.
HK v SSHD [2006] EWCA Civ 1037
40. This case does exist and the citation is correct but Mr Rahman was not able to provide a full copy of the decision. He had located and printed a partial copy from the vlex website. Given that it finished at [17], I asked Mr Rahman to locate the case on Bailii so that he could take me to the relevant passages. He was eventually able to locate the case with some assistance from me.
41. This case says nothing whatsoever about “trauma-informed principles” or their application “when evaluating fragmented or emotionally charged testimony”. What was under consideration in that case was, instead, the use of plausibility as part of a credibility assessment in protection cases. It was decided shortly before Y v SSHD, which I have cited above, and is the leading authority on the subject. It does nothing at all to support or to justify the complaint in the first ground.
42. Mr Rahman sought to submit that [29]-[30] and [24] of HK v SSHD were relevant to the complaint in the first ground but they clearly are not.
MA (Somalia) v SSHD [2010] EWCA Civ 426
43. Mr Rahman did not produce the Court of Appeal’s decision in this case. He produced the decision of the Supreme Court when the case went on appeal: [2010] UKSC 49. He said that he had meant to cite the Supreme Court’s decision and that this was a simple citation error on his part.
44. Mr Rahman submitted that [45] and [48] of the Supreme Court judgment were relevant to his second ground but he was eventually constrained to accept that nothing in those paragraphs was supportive of the complaint in the second paragraph of ground 2.
45. I asked Mr Rahman whether there might have been something in the Court of Appeal’s decision which was in fact relevant. I explained that the Court of Appeal’s judgment was reported under the name of the first appellant – HH (Somalia) – and I asked Mr Rahman to look at the decision to see if there was anything within it which came to his aid. He was unable to find the case until I assisted him with the search terms he might use in the Bailii search engine. Once he had located the case, he suggested rather tentatively that [36] and [43] might be relevant but he eventually accepted that there was nothing in that decision (which concerns humanitarian protection under the Qualification Directive) which was of any assistance to him.
YH (Eritrea) [2008] UKAIT 00070
46. This case does not exist, as Mr Rahman accepted. He submitted that what he had intended to cite was a different Eritrean case at a different appellate level: BF (Eritrea) v SSHD [2021] UKSC 38. He had produced a printed copy of that decision, which concerns the proper approach to interpreting administrative policies in a public law context.
47. I reminded Mr Rahman that ground three concerned section 8 of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants etc) Act 2004, and I asked him to direct me to the parts of the judgment given jointly by Lord Sales and Lord Burnett which concerned the proper approach to that provision. He initially took me to [64], but that is to do with secret and published policies, and obviously has nothing to do with credibility assessments in asylum appeals.
R (YH) v SSHD [2010] EWCA Civ 116
48. This case does exist, and the citation is correct. It concerns fresh claims for protection and paragraph 353 of the Immigration Rules. Mr Rahman provided a copy of it and submitted that [49] onwards was relevant. On looking more carefully at those paragraphs, however, he accepted that it “looked like” the case was not relevant to the complaint made in ground three.
JT (Cameroon) v SSHD [2008] EWCA 878
49. This case does exist and Mr Rahman provided a copy of it. This case (and not those above) is the leading authority on section 8 of the 2004 Act. It has nothing to do with “consideration of plausible, fear based decisions under threat”, which was the submission Mr Rahman made in ground 3. He submitted that [5], [6]-[7] and [9]-[10] supported this complaint. They do not, in any way.
SC (Protection) [2020] UKSC 9
50. The title of this case and the citation do not match. The citation is for MS (Pakistan) v SSHD [2020] UKSC 9. Mr Rahman provided a copy of this case and a related printout from the Supreme Court’s blog. The case is about human trafficking. Mr Rahman suggested that [29]-[33] were relevant to the point that he had made in ground four but nothing said in those paragraphs or in the rest of this judgment concerns internal relocation considerations in the Refugee Convention.
51. Mr Rahman then suggested that what he had meant to cite was HA (Iraq) v SSHD [2020] EWCA Civ 1176. I suggested that that case had gone on appeal and that he might have meant to cite the Supreme Court’s decision: [2022] UKSC 22. He confirmed that that was his intention, and he also made reference to KO (Nigeria) v SSHD [2018] UKSC 53. He was unable to take me to any part of those decisions which was remotely relevant to internal relocation in a protection context, however, since those two decisions of the Supreme Court concern a different type of “undue harshness”. That should have been clear to any lawyer.
AM (Afghanistan) [2007] EWCA Civ 131
52. This citation belongs to a different case – AM (Cameroon) v SSHD [2007] EWCA Civ 131. Mr Rahman did not produce a printed copy of the case. I invited him to locate AM (Cameroon) v SSHD online and to say whether he felt that there was anything in Hooper LJ’s judgment which introduced “feasibility standards” into the assessment of internal relocation in protection cases, as stated in Mr Rahman’s fourth ground . He attempted to suggest that [157] was relevant but it plainly is not; the Court of Appeal said nothing about internal relocation in that case, which was about procedural impropriety at first instance and the attempt to oust the jurisdiction of the High Court after an application for reconsideration had been unsuccessful.
EM (Returnees) Zimbabwe CG [2011] UKUT 98 (IAC)
53. This case does exist and the citation is correct. Mr Rahman produced a copy of this lengthy country guidance decision. He submitted that [29] and [33] supported what was said in ground five (that “cumulative past harm can sustain ongoing risk”. They do not. The first of those paragraphs recounts the history of the case. The second refers to the contents of one of the linked appellant’s witness statements. Mr Rahman submitted that the case established that the tribunal had a duty “to take into account the whole thing” but I was not sure what that meant. If it meant that the tribunal was required to take account of the evidence as a whole before deciding the case, that seemed to me to be a statement which reflected the obligation on any judicial office holder deciding any case.
HH v Italy [2012] UKSC 25
54. This case does exist and the citation is correct. Mr Rahman produced the Supreme Court’s judgment. He had written “para 56” on the front of it but that is a paragraph in which Lady Hale made reference to evidence given by a consultant psychiatrist; it does not contain anything which might be thought to amount to a holding. I observed that HH is a case about the best interests of the child in an extradition context, and I asked Mr Rahman to explain how it could be relevant to the Article 3 ECHR submission he had made in his ground five. He was unable to do so. He did not appear to have any knowledge of the decision.
Conclusions
55. Mr Rahman appeared to know nothing about any of the authorities he had cited in the grounds of appeal he had supposedly settled in July this year. He had apparently not intended to take me to any of those decisions in his submissions. Some of the decisions did not exist. Not one decision supported the proposition of law set out in the grounds. Insofar as the judge in the FtT was said to have ignored or acted contrary to binding dicta in those decisions, Mr Rahman could not identify the principles in question. All of the submissions which were made in the grounds were therefore misleading.
56. There are, I think, four possible explanations for this situation. The first is that Mr Rahman used generative AI to draft the grounds of appeal and failed thereafter to undertake any proper checks on the accuracy of what was said. The second is that someone else drafted the grounds of appeal for Mr Rahman and he failed to undertake any checks on the accuracy of their work. The third is that Mr Rahman selected some random cases, and fabricated others, to augment the grounds of appeal. The fourth is that Mr Rahman genuinely undertook the ordinary work of a member of the Bar, researching authorities to support his arguments, but was unable for whatever reason to understand the authorities he read, leading him to support all of his arguments with inappropriate references to authority.
57. There is no suggestion of another party having been involved in the drafting of the grounds of appeal, and I can accordingly discount the second possibility. Nor do I consider the third possibility to be unlikely. Any member of the Bar would know that it would be a serious matter indeed to pepper their written submissions with random authorities in an attempt to mislead a court of tribunal into granting permission to appeal.
58. The most obvious explanation is the first possibility: that the grounds of appeal were drafted in whole or in part by generative Artificial Intelligence such as ChatpGPT. I am bound to observe that one of the cases cited in Mr Rahman’s grounds – R (YH) v SSHD [2010] EWCA Civ 116 – has recently been wrongly deployed by ChatGPT in support of similar arguments concerning section 8 of the Treatment of Claimants Act: see MS (Professional conduct; AI generated documents) Bangladesh [2025] UKUT 305 (IAC).
59. I gave Mr Rahman a copy of R (Ayinde) v London Borough of Haringey, Al-Haroun v Qatar National Bank QPSC [2025] EWHC 1383 (Admin) at 10am. I drew his attention to [7], which I had sidelined for his reference. At 2pm, having given him time to consider that decision, I asked Mr Rahman how he had conducted his legal research and formulated the grounds.
60. Mr Rahman said that he had used various websites to do his research. He made reference to the website of the Supreme Court and to Bailii. He said at one point (when dealing with R (YH) v SSHD, CA) that he had used Microsoft Copilot to summarise decisions and that he might have been misled by what he had read in these summaries. He did not produce any such summaries, however, and I am not able to accept that a summary produced by that application would misrepresent the very subject matter of a case. A secure and closed source version of Copilot has been available to the judiciary for some time. Having used Copilot to summarise the Supreme Court’s decision in HH v Italy for myself, I found that it provided the following accurate account of the “core issue” in the case:
The court examined how the Article 8 rights (right to family life) of children should be considered when their parents face extradition, especially in light of two key precedents: Norris v USA: Emphasized the strong public interest in extradition, stating that only exceptionally serious interference with family life could outweigh it. ZH (Tanzania): Highlighted that children's best interests must be a primary consideration in any legal decision affecting them.
61. Having set out the other cases considered by Lady Hale and the “Legal Principles Clarified”, the conclusion of the court was then summarised in this way:
The judgment reaffirms the importance of balancing children's welfare with the public interest in extradition. While extradition is rarely blocked due to Article 8, the court emphasized that children's best interests must be meaningfully considered, especially when both parents are involved.
62. Whilst that is not on a par with the headnote to an official law report, it is at least faithful to the subject matter of the case. The suggestion that Copilot might scrutinise a judgment and completely misrepresent its contents is not one that I am able to accept.
63. Mr Rahman also suggested that the inaccuracies in the grounds were as a result of his drafting style. He accepted that there might have been some “confusion and vagueness” on his part; that he might “need to construct sentences in a more liberal way”; and that his drafting should perhaps “be a little more generous” when it came to making specific allegations about judges overlooking or failing to follow binding authorities.
64. The problems which I have detailed above are not matters of drafting style. The authorities which were cited in the grounds either did not exist or did not support the grounds of which were advanced. Where the cases did exist, they were often wholly irrelevant to the proposition of law which was given in the grounds.
65. My other serious concern was that Mr Rahman did not appear to understand the gravity of the situation. He said that he might need further training on legal research and he said that he would try to draft in a more “liberal way” in the future, but was unable to come to grips with the way in which his grounds of appeal in this case might have mislead the tribunal. Nor did he appear to understand that the investigation of such misleading submissions took a significant amount of judicial time. Nor did he appear to be capable of using a basic legal search engine such as Bailii to discover a freely available decision such as HH (Somalia) & Ors v SSHD [2010] EWCA Civ 426. It was only when I gave him assistance with the search terms he might use that he was able to find it, despite having the citation of the case in front of him, contained in his own ground 2.
66. It is overwhelmingly likely, in my judgment, that Mr Rahman used generative Artificial Intelligence to formulate the grounds of appeal in this case, and that he attempted to hide that fact from me during the hearing. He has been called to the Bar of England and Wales, and it is simply not possible that he misunderstood all of the authorities cited in the grounds of appeal to the extent that I have set out above. No barrister could think that HH v Italy was a case about Article 3 ECHR because that provision is not even mentioned by Lady Hale. No member of the Bar could think that AM (Cameroon) v SSHD was about internal relocation because there is no reference to that consideration in the judgment. Even if Mr Rahman thought, for whatever reason, that these cases did somehow support the arguments he wished to make, he cannot explain the entirely fictitious citations such as the Honduras Country Guidance decision. I therefore discount the fourth possibility as well. In my judgment, the only realistic possibility is that Mr Rahman relied significantly on Gen AI to formulate the grounds and sought to disguise that fact when the difficulties were explored with him at the hearing.
67. I am minded, in light of the misleading statements in the grounds and the resulting waste of the tribunal’s time, to refer Mr Rahman’s conduct to the Bar Standards Board. I will make a Show Cause order, requiring him to set out in writing why that course should not be followed. If the explanation I receive is unsatisfactory, it may or may not be necessary to hold a separate R (Hamid) v SSHD [2012] EWHC 3070 (Admin) hearing at which to consider what should be done.