Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER Case No: UI-2025-004458
First-tier Tribunal No: PA/58148/2024
LP/00497/2025

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

3rd September 2026

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE BRUCE
DEPUTY UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE PAUL LEWIS

Between

SM
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:

For the Appellant: Ms. Chaudhrey, counsel instructed by Venire Solicitors
For the Respondent: Mr. Tan, Senior Presenting Officer

Heard at Manchester Civil Justice Centre on 24 August 2026

DECISION AND REASONS

Order Regarding Anonymity

Anonymity was ordered by the Upper Tribunal. No application to discharge was made. It remains in force in the terms below.

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.

Background and matters in issue

1. The appellant is a citizen of Afghanistan who arrived in the UK on 1st August 2022 and claimed asylum based on his political opinion. His claim was refused by the respondent in March 2024 and his appeal to the First-tier Tribunal Judge [the ‘judge’] was refused in a decision promulgated on 16th March 2025.

2. Permission to appeal against the Judge’s decision was refused by the First-tier Tribunal. A renewed application for permission was granted by Upper Tribunal Judge Kamara on 13th October 2025 on three grounds:

(1) The judge gave weight to immaterial considerations or reached erroneous conclusions as to the probability of the appellant’s claim;

(2) The judge misapplied s8(4) of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004;

(3) The judge failed to take into account material considerations in connection to the appellant’s screening interview.

3. The respondent opposed the appeal on all grounds setting out reasons in a Response pursuant to Rule 24, of 28th October 2025. We heard the parties oral submissions supplementing before reserving our decision. We give our reasons for dismissing the appeal below.

Discussion

Ground (2)

4. We start with Ground (2) as this relates the judge’s credibility findings as a whole.

5. Section 8(1) of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004 [the ‘Act’] requires a decision maker to take account:

‘as damaging the claimant’s credibility, of any behaviour to which this section applies’.

6. At Section 8(4) of the Act, behaviours include:

‘the failure by the claimant to take advantage of a reasonable opportunity to make an asylum claim or human rights claim while in a safe country.’

7. In a screening interview shortly after his arrival in the UK, on 4th August 2022, the appellant twice referred to travelling to Bulgaria in 2017. In another interview with the respondent on 9th January 2024 [at Q.9], the appellant denied having left Afghanistan before 2021. The appellant was cross-examined about this inconsistency and said that his interview in 2024 ‘may’ have been misinterpreted.

8. At [16] the judge found that the appellant had been to Bulgaria in 2017; had an opportunity to claim asylum in Bulgaria in 2017 and that the appellant’s ‘lack of honesty on this now undermines his evidence’.

9. On the appellant’s behalf it is submitted that this reasoning betrays an error of fact amounting to an error of law. The judge draws adverse inference from the appellant’s failure to claim asylum in Bulgaria in 2017, without apparently understanding that the events which led to the appellant to leave Afghanistan and claim asylum did not occur until 2021. The rejection of the appellant’s account takes place at a prominent and early part of the judge’s decision, and the nature of adverse findings were material to the judge’s overall assessment of credibility.

10. The background to this alleged error is as follows. In 2017 the appellant visited Bulgaria, returning to Afghanistan thereafter. In September 2018 he began working for the Afghan local police (the ‘Arbaki’). He continued in this role until 2021 when the Taliban took control of Afghanistan. The appellant says that he fled Afghanistan fearing for his life.

11. Setting aside the possibility that the judge was actually just referring to the appellant’s inconsistency about his foreign travel, we are satisfied, and indeed the Secretary of State accepts, that the Tribunal did err in apparently drawing adverse inference from the ‘failure’ to claim asylum in Bulgaria in 2017.

12. We agree, however, with the Respondent that this error of fact is not material to the outcome of the appeal. That is because there were other, more fundamental, issues with the evidence which led the judge to doubt the appellant’s credibility. These included other matters arising under section 8 of the Act. At [17] to [20] the judge sets out fully the appellant’s journey to the UK after leaving Afghanistan in 2021. The judge assessed the appellant’s reasons for failing to claim asylum in either Austria or France where he spent at least a month. He found:

’… the appellant was not interested in claiming asylum and his focus was on reaching the UK. This is not the hallmark of a true asylum seeker who would claim in the first safe country…’

13. No complaint is made about this finding. Accordingly, even setting aside the erroneous comment about Bulgaria, the judge was entitled to find that section 8 was engaged.

Ground (1)

14. This ground criticises the findings at [28], [31], [34], [37], [38], [44], [45] and [47] of the judge’s decision. The complaint is that the judge made findings as to the implausibility of events without having a proper evidential basis to reject the appellant’s account.

15. We apply Volpi v Volpi [2022] EWCA Civ. 464, at [2], in which the Court of Appeal reiterated the caution with which an appellate tribunal must approach findings of fact. Reasons for judgment will always be capable of having been better expressed. An appeal court should not subject a judgment to narrow textual analysis, nor should it be picked over or construed as though it was a piece of legislation or a contract.

16. At [28] the judge rejected as not credible the timing of the threats the appellant claimed to receive. This finding was not in isolation:

(i) At [27] the judge gives weight to an inconsistent account given by the appellant as to the time when he joined the Arbaki.;

(ii) At [29] the judge gives limited weight to the documents relied upon by the appellant noting their nature and the timing of their disclosures.

17. We do not find there is any merit in the criticism of the judge’s finding(s) at [31] referring to the nature and timing of a letter sent to the appellant. The finding is criticised as failing to properly reference with regard to background evidence how the Taliban behave in such situations or at all. The finding at [31] was not however in isolation.

(i) At [32] the judge was unpersuaded as to the authenticity of the letters because of the circumstances in which they were produced in evidence. The judge gave the letters limited weight [44]: This finding is unchallenged. The appellant therefore seeks to say that the judge’s assessment of the content of a letter found not to be reliable.

(ii) At [33] the judge found the contents of the letter was not consistent with the appellant’s oral evidence.

18. At [34] and [38] it is submitted that the judge failed to properly consider whether the Taliban would have threatened the appellant’s wife or searched his house. Again, this conclusion was reached having regard to the surrounding evidence of the Taliban knowing where the appellant lived.

19. Similarly, at [44] and [45], the judge’s assessment of the evidence and the likely actions of the Taliban were not simply speculative but an assessment and rejection of the of the appellant’s narrative.

20. At [47] the judge found:

‘It was not plausible that he would be travelling across the country in the boot, and that the checkpoints would be manned by such incompetent people that they would never check the boot of the car.’

21. It is submitted that there is no proper basis for this finding as it is not clear what searches take place at checkpoints. We do not agree. The judge was entitled to reach the conclusion that what the appellant described as checkpoints would involve checks. The judge did not simply reject the appellant’s claim to have been undiscovered at one inspection point, but many.

22. We find that the judge’s findings as a whole properly examine the appellant’s care. The findings are reasoned and anchored to the evidence set out in the surrounding paragraphs. There is no error of law identified.

Ground (3)

23. At [21] to [24] the judge found the appellant’s failure to mention that he and his brother had worked for the Arbaki at this screening interview undermined his claim. The judge assessed the conflict between the record of the appellant’s interview and his oral evidence in which the appellant disputed the accuracy of the translation for the first time. The judge found:

‘the appellant then compounded the issue by stating the interpreter had mixed up the farmer and Arbaki roles, which was not believable given there was no dispute about the appellant being a farmer. The interpreter was thus accurate on this. The fact that Arbaki is not mentioned in the screening interview leads me to conclude that the appellant had simply never stated this.’

and

‘It was not plausible for an interpreter to mix up a farmer with an Arbaki role’

24. Ground 3 relates to the weight given to the appellant’s answers during his screening interview. It is now submitted that there is no inconsistency between the appellant’s role as a farmer and as an Arbaki. They are not mutually exclusive.

25. On behalf of the Respondent Mr. Tan submits that the judge’s findings were consistent with the remainder of the evidence and not in error. At his screening interview [Q.5.1] the appellant was asked if he had worked for any security branch of the government and replied ‘no’.

26. We find that this ground of appeal is without merit. It is simply a disagreement with the well-reasoned findings of the judge. The judge did not err by referring to plausibility. However expressed, it is clear the judge assessed the inconsistencies in the appellant’s accounts, his explanation for that and made reasoned conclusions founded on evidence.

Conclusion

27. We have found that the error of fact, and ensuing misdirection, identified in ground (2) was not in fact material to the outcome of the appeal. Read as a whole it is clear that the judge gave several rational reasons for finding the account, and the documents which supported it, not reliable.

28. The judge’s reason(s) for rejecting the appellant’s account are summarised at [15]:

‘I do not find the appellant to be a credible witness. He lacked consistency on some of the core aspects of his account. Parts of his account were not plausible. It was very much concerning that his evidence changed post refusal. His attempts to blame the interpreters at multiple interviews for his own inconsistencies also did not assist him. His evidence was changing during the hearing. His evidence attracted little weight.’

29. The judge’s findings were reasoned and detailed. They took full account of inconsistencies and documentary material:

(i) At [42] the judge found the documents relied upon by the appellant as representing a policing manual as inconsistent with his own evidence that police do not get training;

(ii) At [29] and [30] the judge gives limited weight to the documents relied upon by the appellant noting their nature and the timing of their disclosure;

(iii) At [32] the judge gives reasons for being unpersuaded as to the authenticity of documents relied upon by the appellant.

30. No complaint is made as to many good reasons given by the judge for rejecting the appellant’s evidence. The mistake as to whether the appellant had an opportunity to claim asylum in Bulgaria in 2017 is not material to the core of the appellant’s claim.

Notice of Decision

The decision of the Judge does not contain an error of law. The appeal is dismissed.

Paul Lewis

Deputy Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

28th August 2026