Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2025-004553

First-tier Tribunal No: PA/58501/2024
LP/13683/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:
On 25 February 2026

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE JACKSON

Between

NAM
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr M Fazli of Counsel, instructed by Solicitors Inn
For the Respondent: Ms S Rushforth, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 8 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 the Appellant. Failure to comply with this order could amount to a contempt of court.

DECISION AND REASONS
1. This has been a remote hearing which has not been objected to by the parties. The form of remote hearing was by video, using Teams. There were no technical difficulties for the hearing itself and the papers were all available electronically.
2. The Appellant appeals with permission against the decision of First-tier Tribunal Judge Moon promulgated on 11 July 2025, in which the Appellant’s appeal against the decision to refuse his protection and human rights claim dated 19 March 2025 was dismissed.
3. The Appellant is a national of Afghanistan, born on 10 September 1995. He first arrived in the United Kingdom on 29 August 2022 and claimed asylum on 16 October 2022 on the basis that he would be at risk on return to Afghanistan from the Taliban because of his work there as a police officer in the Afghan Public Protection Force (“APPF”).
4. The Respondent refused the application on protection grounds on the basis that the Appellant’s claim was not credible, in essence because of inconsistencies within his claim and against background country evidence (specifically on training requirements for the APPF); because his claim lacked detail in terms of when he stopped working for the APPF, what his day -to-day role was; about specific threats to him and about friends who were killed. The Respondent attached little weight to the photographs and untranslated documents relied upon by the Appellant. Overall, it was not accepted that the Appellant was a member of the APPF, nor that he would face any real risk on return from the Taliban. The Appellant was not entitled to a grant of leave to remain on humanitarian protection grounds and his human rights claims were refused on the basis that he had no established family life in the United Kingdom and he did not meet the requirements of paragraph 276ADE of the Immigration Rules for a grant of leave to remain on private life grounds.
5. Judge Moon dismissed the appeal in a decision promulgated on 11 July 2025 on all grounds. Where necessary I return to the detail of the decision below, but in summary, the Appellant’s appeal was dismissed on protection grounds on the basis that the Appellant’s claim to be a member of the APPF was not accepted and adverse credibility findings were made against him, based on inconsistencies in the claim and the failure to address issues raised by the Respondent. The Appellant was not found to be at risk on return to Afghanistan. The Appellant’s human rights appeal was dismissed on the basis that there were no very significant obstacles to the Appellant’s reintegration in Afghanistan as he had lived the majority of his life there; would be returning to his family as a fit, healthy and educated man and with prospects of employment. The Appellant’s removal would not be a disproportionate interference with his right to respect for private and family life.
The appeal
6. The Appellant appeals on five grounds as follows: that the First-tier Tribunal materially erred in law in (i) failing to properly consider the Appellant’s explanation about the lack of evidence of his employment in the APPF and/or failed to put adverse matters to him which breached procedural fairness; (ii) making a factual error that the Appellant’s deceased friend had not been named; (iii) its approach to assessing the Appellant’s credibility, in particular in its assessment of the chronology given, concerns about which were not put to the Appellant; (iv) failure to assess the evidence of the Appellant’s day-to-day role in the PPF, upon which detailed evidence was given before the First-tier Tribunal; and (v) failing to make findings on whether the Appellant’s campaigning and past protection work for an anti-Taliban MP would put him at risk on return to Afghanistan.
7. On behalf of the Appellant, Mr Fazli relied on the written grounds of appeal as supplemented in oral submissions. In relation to the first ground of appeal, Mr Fazli submitted that the First-tier Tribunal erred in its consideration of the photographs relied upon by the Appellant in isolation and not in the context of the finding that it was accepted that the Appellant may not have been able to formally evidence his employment as he may have destroyed such evidence and it would be too dangerous for his family to request copies given the nature of the protection claim. Mr Fazli was however unable to explain how the photographs could be considered other than as a specific part of the evidence as there was no other documentary evidence to consider them with and it is clear that the lack of other evidence of employment was not held against the Appellant.
8. The submissions then focused on whether there was a breach of procedural fairness in that the Appellant was not asked for more information about the photographs, nor was his explanation as to their origin properly considered. The Appellant was sent the photographs from his cousin, to whom he had originally sent them some years ago and he was not cross-examined or asked about whether they were taken on a digital camera or could identify a date or other information about them. Mr Fazli accepted that there was little, if anything in the Appellant’s written evidence before the First-tier Tribunal about the photos, the context of which was only identified in the index to the Appellant’s bundle; from which it can be assumed that this information must have originated from the Appellant and been included in his instructions for the bundle.
9. Mr Fazli accepted that the Respondent had raised issues about the photographs and lack of information about them in the reasons for refusal letter; however given the importance of the photographs because of the lack of other documentary information about the claimed employment, he submitted that as a matter of procedural fairness there should have been further questions asked of him about them. This included questions about how the photographs had come to be taken, how they were sent, what device was used and so on.
10. In relation to the second ground of appeal, Mr Fazli relied on a factual error by the First-tier Tribunal who found that the claim two colleagues had been killed by the Taliban was not established; including because the Appellant had not named either of the men nor given any information about the circumstances of their deaths and the photographs did not demonstrate any such information either. Mr Fazli stated that one of the men was identified, again only in the index to the Appellant’s bundle, but that was sufficient together with the Appellant’s brief description that the Taliban were responsible for their deaths and he had been told that he would be next. The same findings as to lack of official documents being safely available should apply to the lack of documents as to these deaths, such as death certificates or details of any investigation. Overall, given the central importance of this evidence, Mr Fazli submitted that as matter of procedural fairness, more questions on this part of the Appellant’s evidence should have been put to him.
11. In relation to the third ground of appeal, as to the approach to credibility, it was submitted that the First-tier Tribunal erred in considering the documentary evidence before the Appellant’s oral evidence; however, Mr Fazli accepted that this was a matter of form over substance and alone would not take matters much further for the Appellant. On the evidence, Mr Fazli maintained that the First-tier Tribunal’s finding that the Appellant’s account was not logical because he claimed to have started to work for the APPF in 2017 and was given a military rank because of his law degree, even though he did not complete his degree until 2018. Mr Fazli emphasised that the Appellant’s evidence on dates were ‘approximate’ rather than exact and that it was just possible that the Appellant may have started training with the APPF at the very end of 2017 and completed his degree in very early 2018. In any event, the point was not put to the Appellant to clarify or explain and it was not a significant point on which to draw adverse credibility findings.
12. There was one further separate point as to the different length of training for the APPF claimed by the Appellant (3 months) and information publicly available (3 weeks) which Mr Fazli sought to reconcile with his own theory that there may have been a different training period because of the Appellant’s rank and law degree. However, it was accepted that the Appellant did not offer this explanation or give any reason for the different advertised training period in his evidence to the First-tier Tribunal, save for saying google is not a reliable source of information (albeit the information was obtained from the APPF website).
13. In relation to the fourth ground of appeal, Mr Fazli relied on his own notes from the First-tier Tribunal hearing, replicated within the grounds of appeal (without providing a copy of the note, seeking to agree it with the Respondent first, nor exhibiting it to any witness statement) to the effect that contrary to the First-tier Tribunal’s finding in paragraph 34, the Appellant did give a detailed explanation of his day-to-day role within the APPF. This finding was said to be against the weight of evidence on the point.
14. In relation to the final ground of appeal, it was submitted that the Appellant had given some importance in his evidence to his protection work for an anti-Taliban MP and was one of the campaigners for this person and the First-tier Tribunal erred in failing to appreciate that this was a distinct aspect of the claim upon which an express finding was made. When asked as to whether this point was relied upon in relation to the credibility assessment or as a distinct reason for the Appellant claiming to be at risk on return to Afghanistan, Mr Fazli was unable to answer. He then accepted that on its own this ground was probably not material to the outcome of the appeal as it was not relevant to any of the adverse credibility findings and if there is no error of law in the finding that the Appellant was not in the police force or the APPF, it could make no difference.
15. On behalf of the Respondent, Ms Rushforth relied on the detailed rule 24 response submitted earlier in the appeal and in summary submitted that all of the grounds amounted to no more than disagreement with a detailed decision from the First-tier Tribunal.
16. The first ground of appeal does not identify any error of law in circumstances where the First-tier Tribunal accepted in general that a person may be at risk for retaining or seeking documents and as such may destroy them but that was not relevant to the assessment of photographs that were provided. In the Respondent’s refusal letter, clear issue was taken with the photographs, including that there was no evidence of when they were taken or why. That position remained before the First-tier Tribunal and the Appellant simply failed to establish his case in relation to the photographs which at best showed him holding a rifle and at times in a uniform; but did not establish that he was a member of the APPF as claimed.
17. In relation to the second ground of appeal, Ms Rushforth submitted that it was rationally open to the First-tier Tribunal to make the findings it did in relation to the claim that two of the Appellant’s colleagues were killed by the Taliban. The index to the bundle identifies one name, but this was not included at all in the Appellant’s evidence or in the document itself which has not been translated. There was no evidence at all linking the person in the photograph to the Appellant.
18. In relation to the third ground of appeal, it was highlighted that the inconsistency in the Appellant’s chronology was one of many inconsistencies which were identified and relied upon by the First-tier Tribunal and was not even one of the main ones. In any event, Ms Rushforth submitted that it was rationally open to the First-tier Tribunal to conclude that the dates given by the Appellant were inconsistent and he could have identified more specifically the relevant date, at least of completion of his degree which would have been a significant life event. The burden was on the Appellant to set out the chronology and his claim and in this case, he failed to do so credibly.
19. In relation to the fourth ground of appeal, Ms Rushforth accepted that Mr Fazli’s note of the evidence to the First-tier Tribunal accurately reflected what was said, but in any event, it was a matter for the Judge considering the evidence to attach what weight to it he thought fit and the treatment of such evidence in this way did not establish any error of law.
20. Finally, the fifth ground was submitted to be no more than disagreement on a point on which there was nothing to suggest the Appellant placed any specific reliance and in any event was wholly irrelevant to the outcome of his appeal in circumstances where there are lawful findings that he was not part of the police or the APPF in Afghanistan.
Findings and reasons
21. The first ground of appeal concerns the First-tier Tribunal’s consideration of photographs relied upon by the Appellant of himself which he says support his claim to have been in the APPF. The paragraph dealing with this evidence in the First-tier Tribunal’s decision is:
“32. The appellant is not required to formally evidence his previous employment by providing documents. If he had any documentation associating him with the police, I accept he may have destroyed this and that it would be too dangerous for his family members to request copies. The evidence that is available are the photographs but these do not establish that the appellant was more likely than not to have had a role in the APPF or in the Police. The location of the photographs is not known, neither is the date. These are issues taken by the respondent in the decision letter but have not been addressed. It is very likely these photographs were taken with a smart phone or a digital camera both of which have facilities to address issues taken by the respondent. All these photographs show is that the appellant was at some point, at some location, dressed in combat gear holding a rifle. In at least one of the photographs he is not wearing any uniform suitable for the work that he says he undertook.”
22. I find no error of law in the First-tier Tribunal’s assessment of these photographs. The first point relied upon by Mr Fazli that the photographs should have somehow been considered in the round with the absence of other documentary evidence was nonsensical. There is nothing in the decision to suggest that all of the evidence was not considered in the round (and as such it did not matter whether for convenience this started with the documents or the Appellant’s evidence, both were appropriately considered together for each part of the Appellant’s claim) and Mr Fazli was entirely unable to explain why the acceptance that other documentary evidence may have been destroyed and copies not available (a finding in the Appellant’s favour) had any relevance at all to the assessment of the photographs, nor more specifically, the lack of information about them.
23. Further, there was no procedural unfairness in the findings in relation to these photographs. The Appellant was clearly on notice from the Respondent’s refusal letter of why little weight was attached to them because there was no date or location information available or any other explanation. There was little, if any, further evidence of substance from the Appellant about the photographs before the First-tier Tribunal and he failed to address the points raised previously by the Respondent. The minimal explanation of the photographs being sent back by a cousin failed to address the real issue of lack of relevant information. The reference to limited location data contained only in the index to the Appellant’s bundle was wholly unsatisfactory, it did not form any part of the Appellant’s actual evidence in the absence of it being contained in his written statement or oral evidence. Further, as recorded in paragraph 28 of the First-tier Tribunal’s decision, the Appellant was also given a broad opportunity at the hearing to add anything that he wished to his statement, but added nothing further on this issue. Overall, this is a case in which the burden was on the Appellant to establish his claim and in relation to the photographs (as well as more generally) he simply failed to do so.
24. The starting point of the second ground of appeal was that there was an error of fact amounting to an error of law in the First-tier Tribunal’s decisions in relation to the killing of two people the Appellant stated were colleagues. This was dealt with in paragraph 33 as follows:
“33. I do not accept that it has been established that two colleagues of the appellant were killed by the Taliban. The evidence in relation to this is the appellant’s account, in which neither of the men are named and no detail is given as to the circumstances or how he came to be aware of this when the country was in chaos. There is also a single photograph at AB 81, this shows an individual who has passed away which is sad because he is too young to die but the photograph does not demonstrate who the man was or the circumstances of his death. The writing is in Arabic, even if this was a Police Officer, there is little linking this man to the appellant.”
25. In his initial asylum interview, the Appellant did not identify either of the two men he described as ‘colleagues’ who got killed by the enemies. In his written statement, he stated that two colleagues were attacked and killed by the Taliban and referred to photographs showing this; but again, neither were identified and no other information was given about the colleagues or the photographs. In the index to the Appellant’s bundle (not included in the composite bundle for the Upper Tribunal) one name was given as a title of a picture, which is not an appropriate place to include information not on the document itself, it should have been included in the Appellant’s written statement, particularly if he wished to place importance on the document. Contrary to the Appellant’s evidence, there is nothing in the photograph either that shows this person was a police officer or member of the APPF; that he had any link to the Appellant or that he was killed by the Taliban.
26. In circumstances where there was only one name in the index to the bundle, I do not find that there was any error of fact or misunderstanding by the First-tier Tribunal as to the lack of identifying information in a single photograph about one of two people claimed to have been killed by the Taliban. The First-tier Tribunal was entitled to have primary reference to the Appellant’s actual evidence on this, which was brief at best. In any event, even if one of the two people were named, all of the other reasons identified in paragraph 33 of the decision are entirely unaffected and the conclusion would inevitably be the same as to the weight to be attached to this photograph.
27. For the same reasons the point was rejected in the first ground of appeal, there is also no procedural unfairness in the Appellant not being questioned further about this photograph or asked for additional details. He simply failed to explain who the person was, to identify him as a colleague or to give any details as to the circumstances of his death or even how he found out about it. The burden was on the Appellant to do so and he had more than ample opportunity to provide details to support his claim on this point.
28. I do not deal with the first part of ground three in relation to the order in which the evidence was considered by the First-tier Tribunal in any detail given Mr Fazli’s acceptance that it was not material. I would however note it was a point without merit in substance as well because the First-tier Tribunal’s decision expressly considered the evidence in the round on each issue or aspect of the claim, dealing with all of the relevant evidence, documentary or from the Appellant together on each point.
29. The remaining parts of ground three are a challenge to particular parts of the First-tier Tribunal’s adverse credibility findings, that the Appellant’s chronology as to his degree and starting work, together with inconsistency with the training period was not logical. There is no merit at all in a challenge on either basis. On the first point, the Appellant’s account, even if approximate, did not match the chronology he gave or explanation for being given a particular rank because of his law degree when his evidence was (even if given approximately) that he started work the year before his degree was completed. Mr Fazli’s attempt to posit a theoretical scenario which may make the chronology work was not the Appellant’s case or evidence before the First-tier Tribunal and was therefore wholly inappropriate. On the second point, the Appellant offered no real explanation for the difference in training periods other than a mere assertion that the publicly available information was not reliable. Again, Mr Fazli’s attempt to offer a possible explanation also not relied upon by the Appellant before the First-tier Tribunal was wholly inappropriate. In any event, the Appellant’s grounds of appeal fail to acknowledge that these were two small points out of numerous reasons why an overall adverse credibility finding was made in relation to the Appellant. The findings were lawfully open to the First-tier Tribunal in relation to the inconsistency between the claim and chronology and the inconsistency in training periods on the evidence before it. In any event, without these particular points, the remaining adverse credibility points would stand and there would be no material impact on the outcome of the appeal.
30. The fourth ground of appeal contains no error of law and amounts to no more than disagreement with the First-tier Tribunal’s assessment of the Appellant’s evidence about his day-to-day role; much of which was set out in a detailed discussion of the evidence within the decision. It includes information from the Appellant’s asylum interview (as referred to in the Respondent’s decision letter), his written statement and his oral evidence which included a large number of probing questions and a lack of explanation even when prompted (paragraph 37 of the First-tier Tribunal’s decision). There is nothing irrational or perverse about the First-tier Tribunal’s assessment overall of the Appellant’s evidence about his role, with the conclusion that he had not been able to give a clear picture, one which was open to the Judge to find.
31. The final ground of appeal is wholly immaterial to the outcome of the appeal given the findings above that there was no error of law in the First-tier Tribunal’s decision that the Appellant was not a member of the police force or the PPF. In any event, although mentioned in his written statement, there is nothing to suggest that this was put forward on the Appellant’s behalf as a separate reason as to why he would be at risk on return over and above his employment in the PPF, nor that it was identified by the Appellant in the schedule of issues the First-tier Tribunal was asked to make specific findings on.
32. For all of these reasons, there is no error of law on any of the grounds identified by the Appellant.

Notice of Decision
The making of the decision of the First-tier Tribunal did not involve the making of a material error of law. As such it is not necessary to set aside the decision.
The decision to dismiss the appeal is therefore confirmed.

G Jackson

Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

18th February 2026