Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER Case No: UI-2025-005638
First-tier Tribunal No: PA/54904/2024
LP/12297/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

On 14th of May 2026

Before

DEPUTY UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE BAGRAL

Between

IK
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr K Gayle, Counsel
For the Respondent: Mr D Simpson, Senior Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 16 March 2026

Order Regarding Anonymity

Pursuant to rule 14 of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008, [the appellant] (and/or any member of his family, expert, witness or other person the Tribunal considers should not be identified) 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/or other person). Failure to comply with this order could amount to a contempt of court.

DECISION AND REASONS
Anonymity
1. The Appellant has the benefit of an anonymity order made in the First-tier Tribunal. Having regard to the nature of these proceedings, which concern a protection claim, I maintain that order.
Facts
2. The Appellant is a citizen of Iraq. His claim includes his wife and their three children as dependants. The family left Iraq on 30 October 2021 and arrived in the United Kingdom on 16 November 2021. The Appellant claimed asylum on 15 December 2021.
3. The basis of the claim is that the Appellant and his family fled Iraq in fear of his wife’s family, who are said to have strong links to the KDP. The Appellant’s case is that, at the time of his marriage, it was agreed that his niece, would marry his wife’s brother. His niece refused that marriage. The Appellant says that, because that agreement was not honoured, his wife’s family sought to force his wife to divorce him and held him, his wife and their children responsible for the dishonour thereby caused.
Background to the Appeal
4. By a reasons for refusal letter dated 13 December 2023, the Respondent refused the Appellant’s asylum and human rights claims.
5. The appeal came before First-tier Tribunal Judge Mill (“the judge”) at Hatton Cross on 29 September 2025. In a decision promulgated on 2 October 2025, the judge dismissed the appeal on asylum, Articles 2, 3 and 8 grounds.
6. The Appellant sought permission to appeal.
7. The grounds of appeal advanced two principal complaints. First, it was said that the judge failed to give adequate reasons for a number of material credibility findings. In particular, the judge was said to have misunderstood the nature of the Appellant’s case by treating it as an ordinary honour-based violence claim, rather than a claim arising from an exchange marriage arrangement. On that basis, it was argued that the judge materially erred in treating the absence of harm to the Appellant’s niece, as a significant indicator that the claim was implausible. The grounds further challenged a number of the judge’s additional findings as inadequately reasoned, including those concerning the claimed risk in the United Kingdom, the asserted influence of the wife’s family, the circumstances in which the Appellant’s wife returned to and later left her family home, the alleged inconsistencies in the interview evidence, the issue of divorce proceedings, and the weight placed upon section 8 of the 2004 Act.
8. The second ground was consequential upon the first. It was argued that the judge’s findings on the feasibility of return and redocumentation were predicated upon the adverse credibility findings and could not stand if those findings were materially flawed. In particular, the grounds relied upon the Appellant’s case that neither he nor his family retained identity documentation and that they had no family members in Iraq who would assist them in obtaining replacement documents, such that return would not be feasible if the core account were accepted
9. Permission was refused by First-tier Tribunal Judge Curtis on 1 December 2025. On renewal, permission was granted by Upper Tribunal Judge Perkins on 15 January 2026. In granting permission, Judge Perkins stated that he was particularly concerned by paragraph 15 of the decision and that it was arguable that a major reason for the adverse credibility finding was without foundation.
The Decision of the First-tier Tribunal Judge
10. The judge directed himself to the lower standard of proof and to the need to consider the evidence cumulatively.
11. The judge did not find the Appellant or his wife to be credible or reliable witnesses. He considered that they were inconsistent at times with one another, vague at times, and that many aspects of their account were incredible.
12. A central part of the judge’s reasoning appears at paragraph 15 of the decision, which states:
“If the Appellant and his immediate family were at risk as claimed, then it is highly likely that [the niece] herself would also be at risk of the honour crime. This is not however a feature of the Appellant’s claim.”
13. The judge developed that reasoning further at paragraphs 16 and 17, where he concluded that the Appellant and his wife had failed to explain why the niece was not the focus of adverse attention and found their account on that issue implausible and incredible.
14. The judge went on to make further adverse findings concerning the absence of enquiries about the niece; the claimed risk to the family in the United Kingdom; the asserted influence of the wife’s family; the circumstances in which the Appellant’s wife returned to and later left her family home; the ability to contact neighbours; the fact that she remained there for thirteen days, the circumstances in which she escaped; the issue of a claimed divorce process in Iraq, and the family’s failure to claim asylum in safe European countries en route to the United Kingdom.
15. On that basis, the judge rejected the core protection claim, found that the fear of honour violence and killing had been manufactured, and concluded that the family were economic migrants. The judge further found that return to the IKR was feasible and that redocumentation would be possible with family assistance.
Submissions on Behalf of the Appellant
16. In respect of ground 1, Mr Gayle submitted that the judge materially erred in his treatment of the Appellant’s credibility, in particular as to whether the niece herself would have been the person at risk of an honour killing. He submitted that this was fundamentally an exchange marriage case and not a conventional honour killing case.
17. He relied upon the Appellant’s interview evidence, his appeal statement, and the background material in the bundle concerning exchange marriage traditions, including “jin ba jina” and “gawra”. He submitted that the Appellant had consistently explained that the problem arose because the agreed exchange had failed and that, for that reason, his wife’s family sought to restore honour by bringing the Appellant’s marriage to an end. He submitted that the judge materially misunderstood that case by treating the absence of harm to the niece as inherently implausible.
18. Mr Gayle further submitted that the judge’s findings concerning the wife’s return to and departure from her family home were also affected by a failure to appreciate the relevant social and cultural context. He submitted that the evidence explained why she returned home, why she did not initially disobey her parents, and how she nevertheless managed to leave in the circumstances described.
19. Mr Gayle submitted that ground 2 was dependent upon ground 1. If the credibility findings on the core claim were unsafe, the findings on return and redocumentation could not stand. He submitted that the appropriate disposal was remittal.
Submissions on Behalf of the Respondent
20. Mr Simpson submitted that the judge was entitled to find it implausible that the niece was not herself at risk. He relied upon the Appellant’s own evidence, the witness statements, and the refusal letter, and submitted that the judge was entitled to conclude that the Appellant’s account was internally inconsistent and inconsistent with the background evidence, which the judge had considered. Mr Simpson submitted that the further findings at paragraphs 18 to 26 were open to the judge. He submitted that the judge was not requiring corroborative evidence but was entitled to observe that some of the claims made were vague and skeletal. He further submitted that section 8 had been considered as part of a holistic credibility assessment and that there was no legal error in the weight given to it.
21. As to ground 2, Mr Simpson made no separate submissions in the event that ground 1 were to succeed. He accepted that, if a material error were found, remittal would be the appropriate course.
Consideration
Ground 1
22. I am satisfied that ground 1 is made out.
23 The central difficulty lies in the judge’s reasoning at paragraphs 15 to 17. There the judge treated it as highly likely that, if the Appellant’s claim were true, the niece herself would also have been at risk of an honour crime, and he regarded the absence of such harm as a significant reason for concluding that the claim was implausible. The adverse findings that follow flow from that initial assessment.
24. In my judgment, that reasoning does not engage adequately with the case actually advanced by the Appellant. The Appellant’s case was not simply that the niece’s refusal had triggered a conventional honour crime. His case, consistently advanced, was that this was an exchange marriage arrangement and that, because the agreed exchange had failed, the wife’s family sought to restore honour by insisting upon the ending of the Appellant’s marriage to his wife. That was the specific explanation given by the Appellant, including in his appeal statement, for why he and his wife were said to be the focus of the wife’s family’s hostility rather than the niece.
25. A judge would be entitled to reject that account, but the problem is that this decision does not show that the judge engaged with it in its own terms. The reasoning proceeds on a more general assumption that, if there were a real honour-based dispute, the niece would necessarily also have been the principal target of harm. The judge did not explain why the Appellant’s specific account of exchange marriage was rejected by reference to the evidence about that practice, nor did he identify objective material showing that, in such circumstances, the niece would necessarily be expected to be the person at risk from the wife’s family.
26. That matters because the Appellant’s case, whether ultimately accepted or not, was a more specific one than the judge’s reasoning allowed for. The issue was not simply whether honour violence exists in Kurdish society. It was whether, in the context of the exchange marriage alleged here, the judge could properly treat the absence of harm to the niece as a substantial indicator that the account was false. In my judgment, the decision does not demonstrate adequate reasoning on that point.
27. I reject the submission that this was no more than disagreement with a finding open to the judge. The difficulty is not that the judge reached a conclusion adverse to the Appellant. It is that the reasoning by which he reached it does not sufficiently engage with the actual case advanced or with the cultural and factual distinction at the heart of that case.
28. I am also satisfied that the error was material. Paragraphs 15 to 17 formed an important part of the cumulative credibility assessment. The grant of permission was plainly right to identify paragraph 15 as a major concern. I am not satisfied that the same conclusion would inevitably have been reached had this aspect of the claim been approached correctly.
29. I also accept that the same misunderstanding affected, at least to some extent, the judge’s later assessment of the evidence concerning the wife’s return to and departure from her family home. Whilst some of those findings might, taken individually, have been open to the judge, they cannot safely be divorced from the earlier error in understanding the nature of the Appellant’s case.
30. Ground 1 therefore succeeds.
Ground 2
31. Ground 2 was advanced as dependent upon ground 1, and rightly so.
32. The judge’s findings on return and redocumentation were expressly predicated on the rejection of the core claim and on findings that the Appellant and his wife were not credible and remained in contact with their families. Once the core credibility findings are undermined by the material error identified in ground 1, those consequential findings cannot safely stand.
33. Ground 2 therefore also succeeds.
Conclusion
34. For the reasons I have given, I am satisfied that the decision of the First-tier Tribunal involved the making of a material error of law. That decision is set aside.
35. The error identified goes to the heart of the credibility assessment and, in consequence, to the findings on risk on return and feasibility of return. None of the findings of fact can safely be preserved. The appropriate course is therefore to remit the appeal to the First-tier Tribunal for a hearing de novo before a judge other than First-tier Tribunal Judge Mill.
Notice of Decision
36. The decision of the First-tier Tribunal involved the making of a material error of law and is set aside.
37. The appeal is remitted to the First-tier Tribunal for a fresh hearing before any judge other than First-tier Tribunal Judge Mill. No findings are preserved.

R. Bagral
Deputy Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber
8 May 2026