Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER Case No: UI-2025-005694
First-tier Tribunal No: PA/69096/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:
On 12th March 2026

Before

DEPUTY UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE R FRANTZIS

Between

O.D.
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Ms M Cleghorn (Counsel)
For the Respondent: Mr A McVeety (Senior Home Office Presenting Officer)

Heard at Phoenix House (Bradford) on 25 February 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
Introduction
1. I have decided to maintain the anonymity order originally made in these proceedings by the First-tier Tribunal (“FtT”) because the underlying claim involves international protection issues in that the Appellant claims to fear persecution or serious harm on return to Iran. In reaching this decision, I am mindful of the fundamental principle of open justice but I am satisfied, taking the Appellant’s case at its highest for these purposes, that the potential grave risks outweigh the rights of the public to know of his identity.
2. The Appellant appeals with permission against the decision, dated 28th October 2025 (“the Decision”), of the FtT to dismiss his appeal on all grounds.
Background
3. The broad factual background to the appeal is not in dispute between the Parties. The Appellant asserts that he would be at risk on return to Iran on account of his conversion from Islam to Christianity. In a decision letter dated 5th August 2024, the Respondent refused the Appellant’s claim. She was satisfied that the Appellant is an Iranian national, however, did not accept the Appellant’s claim that he had converted from Islam to Christianity.
Appeal to the Upper Tribunal
4. The Appellant appealed the Respondent’s refusal of his claim to the FtT. His appeal was dismissed on all grounds. The FtT did not accept the factual premise of the Appellant’s claim.
5. The Appellant contends that the FtT has erred in law. In a decision dated 15th December 2025, a different Judge of the FtT granted permission to appeal. That permission was not limited.
6. Before me, Ms Cleghorn crystallised her challenge to the Decision and for convenience and clarity I have labelled that challenge as follows:
i. The primary point was that at [28 & 29] of the Decision the FtT has come to a concluded finding as to the credibility of the Appellant’s account before taking into account, in the round, the witness evidence that was before the Tribunal (“Ground 1”);
ii. Furthermore, the FtT has come to conclusions that were not open to the Tribunal on the evidence and/or has failed to give adequate reasons for coming to those findings (“Ground 2”).
7. Mr McVeety relied upon the Rule 24 Response dated 17th December 2025 and maintained the Respondent’s position that the Decision should be upheld.
Discussion
8. As the Court of Appeal in MH Bangladesh v SSHD [2025] EWCA Civ 688 emphasised, “there have been many recent authorities in both the Supreme Court and this Court on the need for appellate courts and tribunals to be cautious before interfering with findings of fact and evaluative assessments by lower courts and tribunals, and in particular specialist tribunals such as the FTT” [29]
9. I remind myself of the following principles taken from Volpi & Anor v Volpi [2022] EWCA Civ 464:
i. an appeal court should not interfere with the trial judge’s conclusions on primary facts unless it is satisfied that he was plainly wrong.
ii. as an appellate court, the Upper Tribunal it is bound, unless there is compelling reason to the contrary, to assume that the FtT has taken the whole of the evidence into his consideration. The mere fact that the FtT does not mention a specific piece of evidence does not mean that he overlooked it.
iii. Reasons will always be capable of having been better expressed. An appellate 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.
Ground 1
10. At [28], when dealing with the Appellant’s account as to the reasons why he stopped attending Mosque in Iran the FtT finds that “I find that the discrepancies cast some doubt upon the appellant’s overall credibility “. At [29] the FtT, when considering the Appellant’s account of conversations with Habib who he discovered was a Christian, finds that “I do not find the appellant credible.”
11. The FtT then goes on to make numerous further findings as to the credibility of the Appellant’s account from [33] onwards. At [43-50] the FtT deals in detail with the written and oral evidence of the witnesses Mr Blackman and Mr Wilkin, going to the Appellant’s attendance at church in the United Kingdom.
12. At [56] the FtT finds as follows:
“In taking the evidence as a whole, I do not find that the appellant is a genuine convert to Christianity. I do not find him a credible witness. I find that there are discrepancies and implausibility’s in his account referred to above.”
13. First of all, it is trite both that the FtT was required to set out their findings in a logical order and that the Decision requires to be read as a whole. With this in mind, it is far from the case that the FtT has demonstrated a closed mind to the credibility of the Appellant’s overall account before considering the evidence of Mr Blackman and Wilkin. It is evident that the FtT found the Appellant’s evidence as to his reasons for not attending Mosque in Iran and of his conversations with Habib to lack credibility. The FtT then goes onto consider the evidence of both live witness in detail before coming to the overall view expressed at [56] above that “In taking the evidence as a whole, I do not find that the appellant is a genuine convert to Christianity.” (My emphasis)
14. There is no error of law in the approach of the FtT.
Ground 2
15. It is convenient to group the arguments going to this Ground of Appeal together, as Ms Cleghorn did in her submissions to me.
16. First of all, it is argued that it is “impossible to discern” what issue the FtT took with the Appellant’s account at [28]. I do not agree. The FtT records that at question 57 of his substantive interview the Appellant stated that he had stopped practicing Islam. The FtT records that at question 50 the Appellant had stated this was between 2018 and 2019 whilst he was still in Iran and in answer to question 55 the Appellant stated that he stopped going to Mosque [27]. The FtT then records that the Appellant stated in cross examination that he stopped going to Mosque because he was very busy [28]. The evident tension the FtT finds, lies between the Appellant ceasing to attend Mosque owing to a shift in his religious conviction away from Islam as opposed to him being too busy to attend. There is no lack of clarity in the Decision: [28] must be read with [27] and not be subject to narrow textual analysis.
17. Second, it is averred that the conclusion reached by the FtT at [29] is not clear; in particular why the FtT finds “the timeline between when Habib started talking to the appellant about Christianity is relatively short”. I remind myself that reasons are always capable of having been better expressed. It is, however, sufficiently clear from the Decision at [29] that the FtT finds that, taking account of the Appellant’s answers in interview regarding the long time it took for Habib to trust the Appellant enough to begin talking about Christianity, the timeline between when those conversations began, in the context of the Appellant’s claimed conversion in 2021, is in the FtT’s view relatively short. The FtT further reasons that the Appellant’s evidence as to why Habib felt able to speak to him about Christianity lacked credibility. Those findings were open to the FtT; there is no error of law disclosed in [29].
18. Third, I find that the challenges to [31-37] of the Decision amount to no more than a disagreement with the findings of the FtT. In respect of the challenges to [31 and 37] and the reliance placed on MAH (Egypt) v SSHD [2023] EWCA Civ 216, I remind myself that the Court of Appeal noted “the absence of corroborative evidence can, depending on the circumstances, be of some evidential value: if, for example, it could reasonably have been obtained and there is no good reason for not obtaining it, that may be a matter to which the tribunal can give appropriate weight.” In any event, I do not agree that the FtT has looked for corroborating evidence at [31]. Rather, it was open to the FtT to conclude that there was detail lacking in the Appellant’s account of when Habib converted to Christianity. At [37] the FtT again observes, as was open, that the fact that the Appellant does not say that his parents and siblings were questioned by police, and that there was no evidence that the police attended the Appellant’s garage where he worked with Habib, was inconsistent with the claim that there was police interest in him.
19. Fourth, the challenge to [32, 33 & 35] amounts to no more than an attempt to re-argue the Appellant’s case. When pressed in oral submissions, Ms Cleghorn accepted that her position was that these findings were simply not open to the FtT. That is a high hurdle which I do not find is met: the FtT was not plainly wrong, on the evidence, to find as they did.
20. Fifth, in respect of the challenge to the FtT’s findings at [42] as to the evidence of the Appellant’s knowledge of the Christian faith and the weight to be given to the written and oral evidence of the Appellant’s witnesses, this again amounts to no more than a disagreement with the findings that the FtT has made for the sustainable reasons given. The FtT articulates clearly why, having taken account of Ms Cleghorn’s submissions, the weight to be attached to the evidence of the witnesses was limited: “neither witness understood the relevance of asking the appellant questions about why or what made him convert to Christianity in Iran given that he comes from a strict Shia Muslim family and was practising Islam before his conversion” [49 & 50]. The FtT clearly reasons why, on the facts of this appeal, the Appellant had demonstrated a lack of knowledge of major aspects of the Christian faith and that this undermined the credibility of his account [40, 42].
21. Finally, as to the challenge to [48], it is clear why the FtT found that the reference to Rwanda in the written evidence of Mr Wilkin was concerning. As the FtT points out, “I find that the letter wrongly states that the appellant will be removed to Rwanda. I find that the letter has either used cut-and-paste content from another letter or there is some other explanation for why Mr Wilkin has repeatedly stated three times in the letter that the appellant is at risk in Rwanda”. The Grounds of Appeal do not venture an explanation why in this specific appeal Mr Wilkin would reference Rwanda when the Respondent’s decision of 5th August 2024 states that removal would be to Iran. There is no error of law disclosed in the finding of the FtT.
Conclusion
22. The Decision of the FtT must be read as a whole. For the reasons that I set out above the Grounds of Appeal do not (whether considered singly or cumulatively) demonstrate that the Decision of the FtT involved the making of a material error of law.

Notice of Decision
The Decision of the FtT did not involve the making of a material error of law and shall stand.

Roxanne Frantzis

Deputy Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

10th March 2026