Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER Case No: UI-2025-003680
(PA/59462/2023 LP/11850/2024)

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:
On 3rd March 2026

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE BRUCE
DEPUTY UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE O’RYAN

Between

FM (IRAN)
Appellant
AND

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:

For the Appellant: Ms Hashmi, Mamoon Solicitors
For the Respondent: Mr McVeety, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Manchester Civil Justice Centre on the 16 December 2025

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.

DECISION AND REASONS
1. The Appellant is a national of Iran born in 2003. He appeals with permission against the decision of the First-tier Tribunal to dismiss his appeal on protection and human rights grounds.
2. The basis of the Appellant’s claim was that if returned to Iran today he would face a well-founded fear of persecution by the Iranian authorities for reasons of his ethnicity (Kurdish), religion (Sunni Islam) and political opinion (family ties to the KDPI). He relies in particular on the country guidance of the Upper Tribunal set out in HB (Kurds) Iran CG [2018] UKUT 00430 (IAC) to the effect that the Iranian authorities have a “hair trigger” approach to Kurdish returnees.
3. The Appellant’s account is that he lived with his parents and sister in rural Kurdistan. He worked as a shepherd, and is uneducated. He states that growing up he was unaware that his father had any involvement with banned Kurdish group the KDP I. However, in 2017 his father was executed by the Iranian state for his alleged connection to that organization. The Appellant continued living with his mother and sister in the family home. He continued to work as a shepherd, and they were also supported by his mother's brother. One day in 2021 the Appellant was out on the mountains with his flock when he was approached by his uncle and cousin. They told him that there had been a gunfight at his house and that his mother and sister had both been killed in the crossfire. His uncle said that it was no longer safe for him to remain in Iran and made arrangements for him to leave. The Appellant’s uncle told him that KDPI men had visited the house, and that the authorities arrived some time afterwards and opened fire on them.
4. The Respondent refused protection for a want of credible evidence to support the claim, and the Appellant appealed to the First-tier Tribunal.
5. The First-tier Tribunal decision is dated 29 March 2025. The Tribunal began by noting the agreed position of the parties: that this was an appeal which turned on whether the Appellant had discharged the burden of proof in respect of his historical claim, that is to say whether he had demonstrated it to be reasonably likely that the events he narrated had occurred.
6. The Tribunal then gave several reasons for finding that the account was not proven to the lower standard. It considered that the Appellant was “remarkably vague” about his father’s alleged KDPI connections. Even if he was young at the time, the Tribunal considered that the Appellant would have endeavoured to find out more about his father’s links to the group, asking for instance his mother, other relatives or trusted neighbours. The Appellant had been unable to say why the KDPI came to the house when they did, after an apparent absence of 4 years. Nor could he explain how the authorities came to know that the men were there. The Appellant had failed to provide corroborative evidence, for instance in the form of death certificates for his mother and sister. Even if the Appellant was telling the truth, the Tribunal did not accept that his fear of persecution was well-founded. He had been a child at the time of the gunfight, and there was nothing to indicate that the Iranian authorities would have any interest in him: on his own account he had never been a member of that organisation.
7. I should add for completeness that the Appellant has been engaged in some online activity critical of the Iranian regime since he arrived in the UK. The Tribunal found insufficient evidence to establish that any of this was motivated by a genuinely held political belief and so in line with XX (PJAK - sur place activities - Facebook) Iran CG [2022] UKUT 00023 (IAC) held that the Appellant could simply delete his social media profiles before returning to Iran. None of that has been challenged in the grounds of appeal and so does not feature in this decision, save to say that Mr McVeety accepted that if errors were found in the approach to the historical account, the entire case would need to be re-examined, since the finding that the Appellant held no political beliefs was in part predicated on the finding that his father had not in fact been executed by the Iranian state.
Errors of Law: Discussion and Findings
8. The grounds are not well drafted. As Judge McWilliam observed when she granted permission, they are overlong, and we at first struggled to identify what errors of law were being alleged. Having heard from both parties, and having considered the decision of the First-tier Tribunal in light of the evidence and relevant caselaw, we are nevertheless satisfied that the decision is flawed for errors such that it must be set aside.
9. The First-tier Tribunal decision makes three points as justification for its conclusion that this account is not reasonably likely to be true.
10. The first is that the Appellant failed to produce corroboration. As Mr McVeety acknowledges, the starting point in refugee law is that claimants should not be expected to produce documentary evidence in support of their claims: see most recently MAH (Egypt) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2023] EWCA Civ 216. That principle has its roots in paragraph 196 of the UNHCR Handbook
196. It is a general legal principle that the burden of proof lies on the person submitting a claim. Often, however, an applicant may not be able to support his statements by documentary or other proof, and cases in which an applicant can provide evidence of all his statements will be the exception rather than the rule. In most cases a person fleeing from persecution will have arrived with the barest necessities and very frequently even without personal documents….
11. Having had regard to the alleged facts of this case, an uneducated teenager fleeing a mountainside in a state of shock upon learning of the murder of his family, we can well understand the point. Whilst it might be said that the uncle - who as far as we know has remained in Iran - could have assisted, there would be obvious concerns about whether any death certificates issued by the authorities would in any event reflect the true cause of death. We are satisfied that it was therefore an error to require corroboration in that form.
12. The second plank of the Tribunal’s reasoning is that this claim is just not plausible. It found that it is not plausible that the KDPI would turn up at the family home four years after the death of the Appellant’s father, and did not think much of his attempts at an explanation. Nor, the Tribunal noted, was the Appellant able to explain why the Iranian security services also arrived at the house, beyond his own speculation that perhaps there was an informant in the village. As a matter of logic, we consider that a Tribunal should in this context be slow to draw adverse inference from a lack of explanation about the actions of third parties. The Appellant was not at the house at the time. He is not in the KDPI. Nor is he a member of the Iranian security services. It is therefore unsurprising that he was unable to give a definitive answer about what was in the minds of those actors. There could have been many reasons why the KDPI came to the house that day. Perhaps they were just in the area; they may have wanted to leave it a long time before paying their respect to safeguard against the possibility that the house was being watched; perhaps they wanted to try and recruit the Appellant has he approached adulthood. Neither we, nor the Appellant, can possibly know. What we can say is that none of that is inherently implausible. Similarly whilst we have no way of knowing how the Iranian authorities came to be there, we would note, as the Appellant in effect did, the country background material that Kurdish communities are routinely subject to surveillance, and that the use of informers is indeed rife: see for instance section 14.2.2 of the Country Policy Information Note: Iran Kurds and Kurdish Political Parties October 2025.
13. The final reason given by the Tribunal for rejecting the claim is that the Appellant was “vague” about his father’s connections to the KDPI and what might have happened to him. Ms Hashmi began by framing her challenge on this point as the Tribunal having taken immaterial matters into account, but after some discussion settled upon the inverse, to submit that the Tribunal had in fact failed to take material matters into account, namely the age of the Appellant and the circumstances. It is of course apposite to note that the Appellant claims to have been fourteen at the time of his father’s death. The KDP I was, at the material time and indeed today, a banned organisation operating under high levels of secrecy within Iran. We cannot be satisfied, on the face of the Tribunal’s decision, that it took either of those important considerations into account. In respect of the latter, its suggestion that the Appellant could have gleaned some information about his father from “trusted neighbours” perhaps serves to underline the omission. We are satisfied that there was an error in approach, in that the Appellant’s age and the secret nature of KDPI activities do not appear to have been considered when the Tribunal drew the adverse inference that it did from the Appellant’s lack of knowledge.
14. For those reasons we are satisfied that the decision falls to be set aside. We need not therefore address the final ground, which amounts to an allegation that the Tribunal was biased or had ‘closed its mind’ to the Appellant’s case. Whilst we have found error in its approach, we have found absolutely nothing to support those allegations, which is fairness to Ms Hashmi she did not pursue with any vigour in oral submissions.
15. The parties were in agreement that if the grounds were to be made out, this was an appropriate case for remittal to the First-tier Tribunal, given the extent of fact finding required. We agree and so order.
16. For reasons that are not clear to us the First-tier Tribunal declined to make an order for anonymity order in this ongoing protection appeal. Judge McWilliam ordered that the Appellant’s identity remain protected at permission stage, and we agree that it would be appropriate to continue that order at present, given that the Appellant is claiming protection under the Refugee Convention, and that part of his claim remains based in the premise that the Iranian state continue to monitor the diaspora for signs of opposition.
17. My apologies for the delay in promulgating this decision.
Decisions
18. The decision of the First-tier Tribunal is set aside.
19. The decision is to be remade de novo in the First-tier Tribunal
20. There is an order for anonymity.

Upper Tribunal Judge Bruce
Immigration and Asylum Chamber
18 February 2026