Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER Case No: UI-2025-005381
First-tier Tribunal No: PA/53658/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

On 21st of April 2026

Before

DEPUTY UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE L MURRAY

Between

AA
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
And

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr Winter, Counsel
For the Respondent: Mr Walker, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 20 March 2026

Order regarding anonymity

Pursuant to rule 14 of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008, the appellant and any member of his family 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 and any member of his family. Failure to comply with this order could amount to a contempt of court.

DECISION AND REASONS
Introduction
1. The Appellant applied for international protection on 19 November 2021 and the Respondent’s decision refusing his application is dated 22 December 2023. The Appellant’s appeal against that decision was dismissed by First-tier Tribunal Judge AMS Green (the FTTJ) in a decision dated 30 September 2025. The Appellant appealed on seven grounds, namely that the FTTJ made a material misdirection in law regarding Article 3 (documentation) and failed to apply SMO and KSP (Civil status documentation, article 15) (CG)) Iraq [2022] UKUT 110 (IAC) (“SMO 2”) and the relevant CPIN regarding civil documentation (Ground 1); failed to consider the feasibility of return to the Appellant’s home area (Ground 2); erred in the analysis of whether male victims of honour-based violence could form a particular social group (PSG) (Ground 3); committed a “Mibanga” error by focusing on inconsistencies in failing to assess credibility holistically (Ground 4); failed to apply the correct test for sufficiency of protection (Ground 5); failed to apply the correct test for internal relocation (Ground 6); failed to give adequate reasons and failed to engage with CPIN extracts, evidence on tribal power and INID requirements (Ground 7).
2. Permission to appeal was renewed to the Upper Tribunal and granted by Upper Tribunal Judge G Loughran on 19 December 2025 on all grounds.
3. The matter came before me to determine whether the First-tier Tribunal had erred in law, and if so whether any such error was material such that the decision should be set aside.
The hearing
4. Mr Winter did not add to Ground 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 (a) and (b). He was not instructed to withdraw those grounds but wished to focus on Grounds 1, 2 and 7 (c) which all related to the issue of the CSID. In relation to those grounds, he submitted that the Respondent’s refusal letter accepted that the Appellant was not in possession of the CSID and that was based on the evidence before the Respondent at pages 168, 173 and in the Appellant’s appeal statement at paragraphs 19-21 at p96. The FTT had found that the Appellant had contact with his family and they would be able to help him but had erred in failing to take account of the fact that the Appellant would not be able to obtain another CSID because replacements were no longer issued as set out in paragraph 3.3.4 of the CPIN (October 2023) and replicated in the October 2025 CPIN. He submitted that in circumstances where the Appellant did not have his CSID there remained a real risk of ill-treatment under Article 3 as held in SMO 2. In response to the Rule 24, which cited the CPIN at paragraph 3.6.7, he submitted that once someone had been released after detention at the airport, they still needed a CSID. The Rule 24 response also referred to the 1957 registration document, but on a sensible reading the Judge did not appear to have had this in mind. He submitted that the error was material and that the appeal could be allowed outright or remade in the Upper Tribunal.
5. I asked Mr Winter for his submission on the question of whether, if there was no error of law in the credibility findings, it was not open to the FTTJ to find that his family could assist him to redocument given that there were no specific findings in relation to why the Appellant did not have his CSID with him in the UK. Mr Winter submitted that there was no challenge to the Appellant’s explanation as to how he lost the CSID either in the refusal or review.
6. Mr Walker relied on the Rule 24 response. If a material error in relation to re-documentation were found, the Respondent asked for the matter to be remade in the Upper Tribunal.
Conclusions – Error of Law
7. Mr Winter focussed in his submissions on the Grounds dealing with the CSID. However, since the other grounds are still relied on, I deal firstly with those grounds in respect of which no additional submissions were made. The FTTJ found that the Appellant had given an inconsistent account and that there were unresolved contradictions on core aspects of his account as set out at paragraph 17 of the decision. These inconsistencies were found to go to the heart of the claim, and the FTTJ found that they were not satisfactorily explained by fatigue or translation error. These inconsistencies, together with the findings on medical evidence and section 8 conduct led to the rejection (at paragraph 21 of the decision) of the Appellant’s claim that he was found by his girlfriend’s stepfather to have engaged in an illicit relationship and that he was a victim of a blood feud or vendetta. In view of the outright rejection of his claim, it was not necessary for the FTTJ to consider whether the Appellant was a member of a PSG, whether there was sufficient protection or whether internal flight was reasonable. The FTTJ dealt with the Appellant’s arguments in relation to membership of a PSG, sufficiency of protection and internal flight in the alternative (Grounds 3, 5 and 6). It follows therefore, that if there is no material error in the findings on credibility, those grounds fall away.
8. Grounds 4 and 7 (a) and (b) impugn the FTTJ’s credibility findings and I deal with them together. Ground 4 asserts that the FTTJ committed a ‘Mibanga’ error by focusing on inconsistencies in isolation and failing to assess credibility holistically. It is asserted that the FTTJ placed disproportionate weight on a semantic distinction between the words “fainted” in the screening interview, and the word “dizzy” in the substantive interview regarding the Appellant’s reaction to a broken leg and ignored the context of pain and translation limitations. It is further asserted that it is irrational to expect a fleeing asylum seeker to retain hospital records and that the Judge failed to assess the Appellant’s account in its cultural and tribal context.
9. The Respondent’s position in relation to the credibility findings is set out at paragraph 7 of the Rule 24 response and asserts that the grounds are no more than a disagreement with the FTT’s findings of fact and an attempt to reargue the case.
10. In relation to Grounds 4 and 7 (a) and (b), I find that there is no material error of law. The FTT was entitled to find that the inconsistencies in the Appellant’s account were material, went to the core of his account and were not adequately explained. Adequate reasons were provided for those conclusions. The FTTJ took account of the Appellant’s explanation with regard to the word “fainted”, and it was open to him to find that this explanation still left two “incompatible sequences” (collapse vs self-transport). The FTTJ did not “expect” the Appellant to produce medical records from Iraq, as asserted in the grounds, and it was open to the FTT to find that the absence of medical evidence confirming that the Appellant had broken his leg reduced support for his account which depended on disputed detail.
11. The Grounds assert a “Mibanga” error and assert that the FTT focuses on inconsistencies in isolation and failed to assess credibility holistically. In QC (verification of documents; Mibanga duty) [2021] UKUT 33 (IAC) the Mibanga duty is summarised in the headnote as follows:
The Mibanga duty
(2) Credibility is not necessarily an essential component of a successful claim to be in need of international protection. Where credibility has a role to play, its relevance to the overall outcome will vary, depending on the nature of the case. What that relevance is to a particular claim needs to be established with some care by the judicial fact-finder. It is only once this is done that the practical application of the “Mibanga duty” to consider credibility “in the round” can be understood (Francois Mibanga v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2005] EWCA Civ 367). The significance of a piece of evidence that emanates from a third party source may well depend upon what is at stake in terms of the individual’s credibility.
(3) What the case law reveals is that the judicial fact-finder has a duty to make his or her decision by reference to all the relevant evidence and needs to show in their decision that they have done so. The actual way in which the fact-finder goes about this task is a matter for them. As has been pointed out, one has to start somewhere. At the end of the day, what matters is whether the decision contains legally adequate reasons for the outcome. The greater the apparent cogency and relevance of a particular piece of evidence, the greater is the need for the judicial fact-finder to show that they have had due regard to that evidence; and, if the fact-finder’s overall conclusion is contrary to the apparent thrust of that evidence, the greater is the need to explain why that evidence has not brought about a different outcome.
12. The material inconsistencies were set out by the FTTJ and I find that there was no Mibanga error. The medical evidence was considered, not in isolation, but with the other evidence and the FTTJ gave adequate reasons for finding that the GP letter did not corroborate the alleged events and the absence of orthopaedic records was not decisive but that the Appellant’s claim to have suffered a broken leg was nonetheless unsupported by medical evidence. It was only after having considered all the evidence that the FTTJ concluded at paragraph 21 that the Appellant’s account was not to be believed. Further, the FTTJ took account of the CPIN (Iraq: Blood feuds, Honour crimes and Tribal violence (Version 1.0, July 2024)) (paragraph 23), and there is no basis for the assertion that the FTTJ applied a “UK-centric” view of plausibility.
13. I turn then to Grounds 1, 2 and 7 (c) which all impugn the findings on re-documentation and return. It is argued that the FTTJ’s finding at paragraph 35 that the Appellant could re-document “with family help or by attendance in person” constitutes a material error of law because it contradicts mandatory country guidance ignoring the distinction between the CSID (legacy document) and the INID (biometric document). It is argued that the Appellant is from Sulaymaniyah, where CSA offices issue INIDs. It is further argued that the findings ignore the possibility of proxy and that CSIDs cannot be re-issued and that an INID requires the Appellant’s in person attendance at his home CSA office to provide biometrics. It is argued that the findings further ignore the “Catch-22” risk at checkpoints and that the Appellant must travel from the point of return (Baghdad/Erbil) to his home area which entails a real risk of Article 3 ill-treatment at checkpoints. It is asserted that the FTTJ failed to explain how the Appellant can safely traverse these checkpoints to obtain the very document he needs to pass them (Ground 1). The Appellant asserts in Ground 2 that the FTTJ assumed unlawfully that the Appellant could return to his home area simply because the core credibility findings on asylum were rejected and failed to make necessary findings on the method of return, internal travel, enforced removals and checkpoint risk. Ground 7 (c) asserts that the FTTJ failed to give adequate reasons and did not engage with the documentary evidence confirming the impossibility of obtaining an INID by proxy.
14. I clarified at the hearing that the CPIN on Internal relocation, civil documentation and returns referred to by the FTTJ at paragraph 33 of the decision was Version 15.0 September 2025 but Mr Winter agreed that section 5 did not differ from the October 2023 CPIN referred to by the Respondent in the refusal letter.
15. I have considered the Respondent’s position in relation to the Appellant’s ability to re-document. The Respondent accepted in the refusal letter that the Appellant was not in possession of a CSID but concluded that as a failed asylum seeker he could be returned through any airport in federal Iraq or the IKR and as the material facts of his claim had been rejected, with reference to the October 2023 CPIN, there were avenues for him to obtain documentation. The Respondent’s position in the Review was that the Appellant could be reunited with his documents either by “utilising the assistance of extended family members/contacts in Iraq, or by “his own accord”. It was noted that he had a mother, father, three sisters and a brother in Iraq and had had support from a “trustworthy friend” when in hiding before leaving the country. It was considered that the Appellant would be able to contact one of these individuals to obtain his CSID or a replacement document with their help as a proxy or power of attorney and then present the necessary information to the appropriate authorities within Iraq. The Respondent relied on the CPIN October 2023 paragraphs 5.1.1 to 5.1.3 which showed that Iraqi nationals could be returned to any airport in Federal Iraq or Erbil and Sulaymaniyah international airports in the IKR without an ID document.
16. In the Rule 24 response the Respondent relies on paragraph 130 of SMO 2 and submits, in light of that guidance, that the FTTJ’s findings at paragraphs 34 and 35—that the Appellant remained in contact with family and could redocument with their assistance—were reasoned, lawful, and entirely open to them.
17. The FTTJ dealt with the question of re-documentation at paragraphs 34 and 35 of the decision. He did not accept that the Appellant had no family support, noting that he previously described contact with his father after the incident and that his use of the Red Cross tracing service appeared recent and limited. The FTTJ then found that he was not satisfied that the Appellant could not re-document. The reasons given were that he had not shown that he had never held a CSID, nor that extended family could not assist. Reliance is placed on the CPIN which is said to note that “while difficult, re-documentation is possible via family or in-person attendance.”
18. The Respondent’s position on the return of Iraqi nationals at the date of the FTT’s decision was that Iraqi Nationals could be returned to any airport in Federal Iraq or Sulaymaniyah international airports in the IKR. The FTTJ briefly summarises the position on documentation at paragraph 33 of the decision. It is not argued that this summary is incorrect. The FTTJ also references SMO2 in relation to documentation at paragraph 15 (c) of the decision and therefore plainly had the country guidance in mind.
19. In SMO2, the Upper Tribunal found that persons not in possession of either a CSID or INID on return, or shortly after return, to Iraq or the Iraqi Kurdistan Region are at a real risk of serious harm sufficient to breach paragraphs 339C and 339CA(iii) of the Immigration Rules/Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) at security checkpoints when attempting to travel internally by land within Iraq or the KRI.
20. The Appellant argues in his grounds that the Respondent must have accepted that the Appellant’s CSID was taken from him on his journey to the UK and that the FTTJ erred by failing to take account of the fact that given the circumstances of that loss his family would be unable to obtain another for him as they were not being issued. I do not accept that argument. The FTTJ made no express findings as to the whereabouts of the Appellant’s CSID, the Respondent made no concession in the refusal letter that he had lost it on his journey and the Respondent’s position as clearly set out in the Review was that the Appellant would be able to contact his family or trusted friend “to obtain their CSID a or obtain a replacement document.” The FTTJ did not believe any part of the Appellant’s account. I have found that sustainable reasons were given for the adverse credibility findings. He did not therefore accept that the Appellant had lost his CSID on the journey to the UK. It was therefore open to the FTTJ to further find that that he could re-document with the assistance of family and it is tolerably clear that although no express findings were made as to the whereabouts of the CSID, the FTTJ preferred the Respondent’s arguments and position to that of the Appellant whose case was entirely disbelieved. Clearly if the CSID still exists the SMO 2 risk at checkpoints does not arise. In view of the rejection of the entirety of the account, the finding that he was able to redocument was both open to the FTTJ on the evidence and arguments before him and adequately reasoned.

Notice of Decision
The making of the decision of the First-tier Tribunal did not involve the making of a material error of law and I do not set it aside.

L Murray

Deputy Upper Tribunal Judge
Immigration and Asylum Chamber 23 March 2026