Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2025-003471

First-tier Tribunal No: PA/52264/2024
LP/08140/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

On 24th of November 2025

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE RASTOGI
DEPUTY UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE BURNS

Between

MH
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr A. Islam, Counsel, instructed by Adam Khattak solicitors
For the Respondent: Ms S. Simbi , Senior Home Officer Presenting Officer

Heard at Birmingham Civil Justice Centre on 7 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

1. The appellant appeals, with permission, the decision of the First-tier Tribunal (“FTT”) dated 29 June 2025 in which the judge dismissed the appellant’s appeal against the respondent’s refusal of his protection claim. The respondent’s decision was made on 19 January 2024.

2. The appellant appealed the decision on four grounds but permission was only granted in relation to two of them. By way of a decision dated 4 August 2025, another FTT judge granted permission to appeal on the following bases:

“7. Ground 3 alleges that the Judge dealt with legal system of Pakistan issues in an unreasonable and improper way. The complaint is that the Judge has made a number of assumptions as to
8. i. plausibility of the grant of bail (either at all, or whilst a summons was
9. pending, or after having been sentenced),
10. ii. the decision to make further charges.
11. iii. The speed with which he was convicted
12. iv. Whether payment for release could be so “easily” arranged
13. Having considered the matter I agree that this is arguably erroneous. I cannot see upon what evidential foundation or basis the Judge concluded that, for example, bail was not possible if convicted in Pakistan. Permission is granted on this ground.
14. Ground 4 complains that the same mistake as in ground 3 is made but this time in terms of investigation an investigative practices of the Taliban and Pakistan.
15. For the reasons given at 13 above this ground is arguable as I cannot see upon what evidential basis the Judge concluded that the Taliban would act in a particular way.”

3. Although the appeal was resisted by the respondent by way of a Rule 24 Notice, Ms Simbi took a slightly different approach at the hearing. She accepted the judge may have fallen into error as there was no evidence on which to base his findings in the impugned paragraphs, although she submitted it was more of a plausibility rather than a credibility point. However, she did not accept that the errors were necessarily material and she was not of the view that the errors infected the credibility findings. She submitted that, in the event a re-hearing was required, the appellant would need to produce some evidence to support his contentions, otherwise, the Tribunal on the next occasion will be faced with the task of resolving the same issues without evidence. The respondent was likely to take the same issues as she did at the hearing before the FTT.

4. Mr Islam argued the errors were made out, not only as there was a lack of evidence, but also because the judge appeared to have evaluated the evidence through a Western lens. Furthermore he argued the errors were material because, had the judge not made them, he would have concluded the appellant was wanted by the authorities and had to escape from Pakistan as a result, so the outcome is likely to have been different.

Discussion

5. The background to this appeal is that the appellant is a 45 year old citizen of Pakistan who fled in July 2016 having been accused both by the Pakistani authorities and the Taliban for providing information to the other in relation to an encounter between the authorities and the Taliban outside the appellant’s shop in which a number of soldiers were killed. He was arrested and detained for about a week, and released after the payment of a bribe. He was able to leave the country before travelling through multiple different countries including Greece where he lived for 3 years. He arrived in the United Kingdon on 21 December 2021 and claimed asylum.

6. The judge made an adverse credibility findings based on numerous factors, some of which he listed at [14iii]. Those included the following (our emphasis but otherwise set out as originally appeared):

“(a) It was implausible that the Appellant would have attracted the adverse attention of the Pakistani authorities, if he had advised the army that the Taliban were at the shop as he had been requested to do.
(b) if the Pakistan army was genuinely looking for him, it is implausible that, having come to his house, they did not search it.
(c) If the Appellant had been genuinely fearful of the army, it would be expected that he would have gone into hiding. However this was not the case. He went back into the shop, on the day after the incident. When challenged about that by the HOPO, he claimed that he had only gone in to lock up. If he were fearful for his life he would not have taken the risk.
(d) Even it were accepted that it had been essential to go into the shop once in order to lock up, that did not explain why he would return to the shop after that, which he definitely did, since he claims to have been arrested from his shop on 06/06/16.
(e) Initially the Appellant had claimed that during the week that he was kept in custody he was convicted (although how it was improbable that he arrange a trial in that time] and it was not clear what the charges were. He further claimed that he was sentenced to a custodial sentence of 10 years, and he had produced a document (to show that.
(f) Despite having claimed that he had been convicted and sentenced to a 10 year custodial sentence he was released after a week. He initially claimed that this had been achieved by payment of a bribe, but varying evidence had been given as to how much that had been paid and if he had been an important political prisoner, it seemed unlikely that that could so easily be arranged.
(g) He later changed his evidence and claimed that payment had not been a bribe but had been a payment to secure bail. This inconsistency tended to undermine the Appellant’s credibility. Moreover it was illogical because bail is only possible before sentence, and he had said he had already been sentenced.
(h) During cross examination the Appellant seemed to change his evidence again and said that he did not know if he had been sentenced to 10 years custody, but thought that was the sentence he might get. This contradiction of his previous evidence damaged the Appellant's credibility.
(i) If the Appellant was arrested on 06/06/16 and kept in custody for a week then he would have been at liberty by about 13/06/16, but he did not leave Pakistan until July 2016. He claimed that he had been staying with a relative but the authorities traced him to the address, but then did not search the house, which seemed unlikely.
(j) During cross examination it was put to the Appellant that he had changed many details of his case and today his representative asked for leave to amend much of what was stated in his witness statements. The Appellant’s response to that was that any errors were attributable to his solicitors. However he confirmed that he had not complained about their alleged mistakes. If they represented him as poorly as he claimed I would have expected him to have complained about them.
(k) I also consider it important to bear in mind the provisions of Section 8 as referenced in the refusal letter. Her claimant’s credibility may be adversely affected if he fails to claim asylum in the first safe country, without a reasonable excuse. The Appellant in this case was travelling outside Pakistan for 6 years before coming the UK. During that time he travelled through Greece, Bulgaria, Hungary, Austria, Germany, France, Belgium, Denmark and Sweden. He did not apply for asylum in any of these countries, even though he lived for 3 years in Greece. When challenged about this he had given various explanations although none of them in my view amounted to a good reason. He had alternated between saying, he had been ill, it had been winter and that he had lost contact with the agent and since he had already paid him “in Turkey" to bring him to the UK, he wanted to find him again. The Appellant’s advocate asked me to bear in mind that s.8 is only starting point, but in this casein my view, there was no reason to depart from it. I consider that in the absence of an adequate explanation, the Appellant’s credibility is adversely affected.
(l) When I look at the Appellant's evidence in totality I note that he has given contradictory evidence on major points. He has made assertions that are implausible, such as returning to the shop, when he claimed that he was ”in hiding” and being sentence to a lengthy custodial sentence and then released. I have looked at the documentation he had produced, which is riddled with inconsistencies and of doubtful provenance. He explanation of why he had stayed in numerous ”safe countries”, in particular living in Greece for 3 years, without applying for asylum, is not believable. My conclusion is that the Appellant is not a credible witness.”

7. Elsewhere in the decision, the judge made certain other observations which are also challenged within this appeal. The first is found at [4i] when the judge noted that there would be “no question of bail” given that the appellant had been convicted and sentenced to 10 years custody.

8. Furthermore, at [4v] the judge evaluated the First Information Report (“FIR”) and noted inconsistent information upon it about the date of its issue, but noted that on one of those versions (25/10/15) “If that were correct and the issue of the FIR was pending it is difficult to see why the Appellant should have been released from custody on or about 13/06/16”.

9. Although the grounds raise challenges to various comments made at paragraphs [9] and [12] of the decision, these paragraphs recited the questioning and submissions and do not include commentary by the judge (unlike [4] which deals with documents and on which the judge has made comment as set out above).

10. It is not in dispute that the judge had no evidence before him to justify a finding that it was ‘implausible’, for example, that the appellant could not be released on bail after he had been sentenced. For such a finding to be made out, there would have to be some evidence before the judge of the law in the country in question (CS and Others (Proof of Foreign Law) India [2017] UKUT 199 (IAC)).

11. Furthermore, the judge has not addressed the appellant’s actual explanation which is that he was released on bail following a payment (variously described as a bribe or a payment for bail). In the event it is a bribe, then by its nature that may not follow whatever the lawful procedure is in Pakistan. It is not clear what is meant by a payment for bail, but there was no evidence on which a judge could base a finding that such a payment was other than in accordance with lawful procedure in Pakistan.

12. There is a fundamental difference between a judge observing a lack of evidence to support a position and a judge making a finding not open to them on the evidence. In relation to the former, it would then be incumbent on the judge to consider any explanation for the lack of evidence and the weight to then attach to the appellant’s unsupported account. That is not what the judge did here. Here, the judge was taking it further and rejecting the appellant’s account as implausible (or at times unlikely), without the benefit of anything by which such plausibility or lack thereof could be measured.

13. Plausibility was addressed in HK v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2006] EWCA Civ 1037 which said at [28]

“in many asylum cases, some, even most, of the appellant’s story may seem inherently unlikely but that does not mean that it is untrue. The ingredients of the story, and the story as a whole, have to be considered against the available country evidence and reliable expert evidence, and other familiar factors, such as consistency with what the appellant has said before and with any other factual evidence (where there is any).”

14. At [29] the Court endorsed the following:

“In assessing the general human rights information, decision-makers must constantly be on guard to avoid implicitly recharacterizing the nature of the risk based on their own perceptions of reasonability”.

15. At [30] the Court also noted what Lord Brodie said at [24] of Awala v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2005] CSOH 73:

“rejection of a story on grounds of implausibility must be done “on reasonably drawn inferences and not simply on conjecture or speculation”. He went on to emphasise, as did Pill J in Ghaisari, the entitlement of a fact-finder to rely “on his common sense and his ability, as a practical and informed person, to identify what is or is not plausible””.

16. Awala was also noted with approval at [26] of Y v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2006] EWCA Civ 1223 and at [27] the Court said:

“A decision maker is entitled to regard an account as incredible by such standards, but he must take care not to do so merely because it would not seem reasonable if it had happened in this country. In essence, he must look through the spectacles provided by the information he has about conditions in the country in question.”

17. At no stage did the judge self-direct as to the need for caution when assessing the plausibility or credibility of the appellant’s claims or remind himself of the dangers of viewing the evidence through a Western lens.

18. Of course, as the judge is a judge of a specialist Tribunal, on its own, that may not matter as a specialist judge is assumed to know the law. However, in our judgment, for the reasons she gave and for the reasons we have set out above, we are satisfied Ms Simbi was correct to accept that the judge had fallen into error in his approach to the findings in relation to those factors he described as implausible when referencing either the legal situation in Pakistan or the behaviour of combatants such as the Taliban.

19. We are satisfied that there is enough reference in the judge’s reasoning to “implausible” or “unlikely” that it is impossible to isolate those findings from the others which informed the judge’s rejection of the appellant as a credible witness and then to reject entirely his account of events in Pakistan. The case stands or falls on the credibility of the appellant’s account as is clear from [6(i)] of the decision, in which the judge noted the respondent’s concession that if the appellant was credible, there would not be sufficient protection for him in Pakistan. Accordingly, the judge’s errors are plainly material.

20. For this reason, the judge’s errors justify setting the decision aside pursuant to section 12(2)(a) of the Tribunal, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007 (“the 2007 Act”).

21. Having considered where the remaking of the appeal should take place, and in light of the Court of Appeal’s decision in AEB v SSHD [2022] EWCA Civ 1512, the decision in Begum (Remaking or remittal) Bangladesh [2023] UKUT 00046 (IAC) and para. 7.2 of the Senior President’s Practice Statements, and as the credibility assessment will need to be carried out afresh, we find the appropriate course is for the appeal to be remitted to the First-tier Tribunal pursuant to section 12(2)(b)(i) of the 2007 Act.

Notice of Decision

1. The decision of the First-tier Tribunal contains an error on a point of law such that the decision is set aside with no preserved findings.

2. The appeal is remitted to the First-tier Tribunal to be heard de novo by a different judge.

SJ Rastogi

Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

19 November 2025