Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER Case No: UI-2025-005272
First-tier Tribunal No: HU/52701/2024
LH/07928/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:
On 4th March 2026

Before

DEPUTY UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE LAY

Between

RS
(Anonymity Order made)
Appellant
v

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation
For the Appellant: Ms Corrington-Wolf, instructed by Seren Solicitors
For the Respondent: Mr D Simpson, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 23 February 2026

Order Regarding Anonymity

Pursuant to rule 14 of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008, the anonymity of the Appellant is maintained.

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 is from the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). The Secretary of State refused the asylum and human rights claims in a decision dated 15 February 2024. His appeal against that decision was dismissed in a First-Tier Tribunal determination promulgated on 14 October 2025. First-tier Judge Chana did not accept the Appellant’s account of having been targeted by militants associated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), made a number of adverse credibility findings, and further dismissed an Article 3 ECHR claim which was based on return without documentation.
2. Permission to appeal to the Upper Tribunal was granted by First-Tier Judge Singer on 14 November 2025 on all pleaded grounds. In particular, FTJ Singer noted that “it is arguable that the FTJ failed to have adequate regard to relevant evidence when assessing credibility, including the Appellant’s witness statements and his interview. It is arguable that the FTJ incorrectly held against the Appellant failing to mention things (the theft accusation and finding weapons) and not giving detail (on his escape) when he had in fact done so. It is also arguable that the FTJ failed to adequately engage with the country information evidence …”
3. There was a Composite Bundle served. Bundle references in this determination are in the following format: [CB: XX]: [Composite Bundle: PDF page number]. There was a Rule 24 reply by the Respondent dated 21 November 2025.
The grounds of appeal
4. There were four grounds of appeal drafted by Counsel, albeit there are additional strands developed under the broad headings listed [CB: 8]. Ground 1 argued that the FTJ neither identified or grasped the material issues in dispute in the appeal and thereby failed later in the determination to “resolve” such issues as “Article 15c involving indiscriminate violence in the A’s home area”.
5. Ground 2 also attacks the FTJ’s approach to the issue of “indiscriminate violence” in the Appellant’s home area and the application of the Country Guidance case of SMO and KSP (Civil status documentation, article 15) (CG)) Iraq [2022] UKUT 110 (IAC). It contends that the determination is “silent on the issue of humanitarian protection due to Turkish military strikes in the area which was specifically addressed in submissions and with reference being made to objective evidence in the Appellant’s bundle [CB: 8].
6. Ground 3 submits that the credibility assessment goes awry because the FTJ has failed to have regard to at least of the three witness statements relied upon in the appeal, as well as two asylum interviews, leading the FTJ to mistakenly conclude that the Appellant was raising key details “for the first time” in the appeal hearing itself.
7. Ground 4 argued, at paragraph 25, that “the FTJ makes no reference to the background evidence in the supplementary bundle relating to the Turkey-PKK conflict which supports the credibility of the Appellant being accused of being a Turkish spy. In parallel, the same ground contends that the FTJ did not have any regard at all to an expert country report by Dr Antonio Guistozzi which specifically addressed the issue of return to Iraq with or without documentation.
Clarification of the Respondent’s position
8. The Respondent’s Rule 24 [CB: 14] stated that the Secretary of State does not oppose the Appellant’s appeal on Ground 4, namely that the FTTJ failed to consider background evidence. However, the Respondent opposes Grounds 1-3.
9. At the outset of the error of law hearing I sought clarification from Mr Simpson on the Respondent’s position. The Rule 24 states, at paragraph 3, that “the FTTJ failed to adequately engage with background evidence” and “invites the Tribunal to determine this issue [my italics added] in the Upper Tribunal along with [my italics added] the issue of Article 15c risk… with preserved findings on credibility and the CSID card”.
10. But a central strand of the Appellant’s Ground 4 (paragraph 25 of the grounds) was that the failure to deal with evidence on the Appellant’s home area – Dohuk being a region, north of Erbil, on the border with Turkey which has long had a significant infiltration by the PKK – was relevant to the approach the FTJ took to the credibility of the account given in regards to asylum. I asked whether the Home Office’s position was that “this issue” formed part of what needed to be determined or redetermined in light of the acknowledged error(s).
11. Mr Simpson clarified that the Respondent’s position was slightly more nuanced, ie. that (i) the FTJ had indeed made errors in not having regard to both background country evidence about Dohuk and the expert report on documentation but that (ii) these were not material errors of law because they were not capable of having made a different to the outcome of consideration of asylum, Article 3 (the documentation issue) or Article 15c (indiscriminate violence in the home area).
12. I then heard oral submissions from both Ms Corrington-Wolf and Mr Simpson, with Ms Corrington-Wolf given the last word.
Conclusions
13. I begin by reaching a view on Ground 4, not least because it is acknowledged by the Secretary of State that the FTJ erred by not having regard to evidence. The issue for me is whether that those errors/omissions by the FTJ can be said to be “material” in that the evidence was, at minimum, capable of having made a different to the outcome.
14. As regards asylum, Mr Simpson submitted that the country evidence would not and could not have affected the credibility assessment. I disagree. The Appellant had submitted evidence [CB: 21-30] about the PKK targeting someone in Duhok in 2020, an article which discussed the social, political and security dynamics in the particular home area and the degree of PKK infiltration/influence. Further, there was a BBC article, “Life inside Iraq's ‘Forbidden Zone’ controlled by Turkey”, dated 30 April 2025 [CB: 31] about “a large strip of land in northern Iraq affected by Turkey's war with the Kurdish militant group the PKK”.
15. This is not a situation in which it is being suggested that I can assume the FTJ has had regard to evidence presented: Volpi & Anor v Volpi [2022] EWCA Civ 464. Rather, the Secretary of State has conceded that the FTJ did not have regard to this evidence but maintains instead that the evidence could not have availed the Appellant.
16. Given that the core of the Appellant’s asylum claim was that he had unwittingly found himself caught up in the PKK’s operational presence in Dohuk, and that a civilian could face accusations from one or both sides, these items of country evidence were plainly relevant to any credibility assessment, consistent with KB & AH (credibility-structured approach) [2017] UKUT 491. I therefore find that it was a material error not to have considered them at all and, moreover, taints the credibility assessment more generally.
17. I also find that Ground 3 is made out. Mr Simpson submitted that any mistakes of fact over the purported evolution of the Appellant’s account were not material to the FTJ’s final reasoning and conclusion. I cannot agree.
18. The FTJ, in her assessment of credibility, plainly saw it as significant that on certain key details she (wrongly) felt that the Appellant was raising things “for the first time” in the oral hearing itself, having “failed” to provide a sufficiently coherent account beforehand.
19. This is most stark in three strands of the FTJ’s assessment of past facts. At paragraph 9 of the determination, the FTJ states that “however, at the hearing, and for the first time, the appellant said that the PKK wanted to recruit him to their party. These inconsistencies in the Appellant’s evidence goes to his credibility and to the credibility of his claim”. This is wrong: in the Appellant’s witness statement dated 29 March 2025 he stated: “they were saying that I was Kurdish like them, that I should be helping them not spying for Turkey, they were trying to convince me to fight for them” [CB: 18],
20. Then, at paragraph 10 of the determination, it is said that the Appellant had not previously mentioned that he suspected he had stumbled upon a PKK weapons cache and that this was the source of the suspicion against him. The FTJ explicitly states: “At the hearing… this is the first time that the appellant stated that he was resting in a cave where the PKK kept their weapons. These inconsistencies go to the appellant’s credibility”. But the Appellant had already said this both in his second asylum interview [CB: 286] dated 11 January 2024 (“i think it was a weapon”) and, more obliquely but still consistently, in his witness statement dated 10 June 2024 (“some heavy metal material” under the canopy).
21. At paragraph 14 the FTJ also finds it non-credible that the Appellant was taken from Iraq to Syria “on foot”, including that this would have required crossing the Tigris river and that “the appellant also did not mention that he would have needed to cross the river Tigris to get to Syria”. But the Appellant, at paragraph 8 of his 2024 witness statement, gave an account of being taken onto a boat.
22. Mr Simpson, who accepted that there were “mistakes”, submitted nonetheless that these were not the only strands of adverse credibility in the determination. That is true enough. But we know that the mistakes of fact/errors made as between consistency of oral and previous written evidence played a material role in the credibility assessment because the FTJ expressly and repeatedly states that they did. Unravelling three strands of that assessment, coupled with the failings identified by Ground 4, mean that the determination cannot stand.
23. Moreover, the need to re-evaluate credibility in the round by way of a fresh hearing necessarily also involves revisiting the Appellant’s evidence on family contact, assistance, documentation and return – ie. the Article 3 ECHR claim.
24. In light of my conclusions on Grounds 3 and 4, and since those errors necessitate a de novo hearing on the Appellant’s core credibility and protection claims, I consider Grounds 1 and 2 to be otiose.
25. I invited, on a provisional basis, submissions from the representatives on whether the appeal should be retained in the Upper Tribunal or remitted to the First-tier Tribunal. Ms Corrington-Wolf’s position was that the appeal should be remitted. Mr Simpson submitted that the appeal could either be retained or remit but that, in either case, paragraph 17 of the determination on documentation should be preserved.
26. I have had regard to Section 7 of the “Senior President’s Practice Statements of the Immigration and Asylum Chambers of the First-tier Tribunal and the Upper Tribunal” (SPT Ryder, 11 June 2018), Begum (Remaking or remittal) Bangladesh [2023] UKUT 46 (IAC) and AEB v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2022] EWCA Civ 1512 . Remittal is not the usual course but it is appropriate in the circumstances of this appeal, having regard to the nature and extent of the factual finding and the issues that will be in dispute.
27. On paragraph 17 of the determination: my concern about preserving this section of the determination is that evaluation of risks entailed in return owing to lack of documentation is, in part, also a matter of credibility (see paragraph 23 above), of course allied to country and expert evidence, if provided. Given the need to revisit credibility in toto, I do not see any justification for binding the FTT on remittal. Further, I note that paragraph 17 itself explicitly relies upon an older iteration of the Respondent’s Country Policy Information Note (CPIN), dated October 2023, which has now been superseded (since October 2025). As Ms Corrington-Wolf correctly submitted, the updated CPIN, at page 60, resiles from Office evidence that had previously been relied upon in the 2023 CPIN as to enforced returns to KRI and therefore, at the very least, there will need to be an assessment of the Appellant’s credibility, in the context of the new CPIN (and the Dr Guistozzi report, which the Respondent accepts was not considered first time around).
28. On balance, therefore, I remit this appeal to the First-tier Tribunal for a fresh hearing, with no preserved findings.
Notice of Decision
The decision of the First-tier Tribunal, which dismissed the appeal, is set aside and the appeal is remitted to the First-Tier Tribunal to be heard afresh.

Taimour Lay

Deputy Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

27 February 2026