Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case Nos: UI-2025-005916
First-tier Tribunal No: PA/54483/2023
LP/08549/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:
On 1st April 2026

Before

DEPUTY UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE RIPLEY

Between

I.A.A (Lebanon)
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Ms Laughton, Counsel, instructed by Wilsons Solicitors
For the Respondent: Ms Nolan, Senior Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 10 March 2026

ANONYMITY ORDER

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. The appellant appeals a decision of First-tier Tribunal Cary (“the Judge”) dated 21 June 2025 dismissing the appellant’s international protection and human rights appeal.

Anonymity Order

2. The Judge issued an anonymity order. Neither party requested that the order be set aside. I observe that the appellant seeks international protection and consider that his private life rights protected under article 8 ECHR presently outweigh the right of the public to know his identity as a party to these proceedings. The latter right is protected by Article 10 ECHR.

Relevant Facts

3. The appellant is a Palestinian national from Lebanon. The appellant was shot in crossfire in 2011 by a member of Ansar Allah. His claim was that he had incited others in his neighbourhood not to cooperate with Ansar Allah and as a consequence, the day before he left Lebanon to visit the UK, he was apprehended by Ansar Allah and beaten up. While he was in the UK, visiting his brother who has refugee status, his home in the Lebanon was raided by members of Ansar Allah who questioned his father about where the appellant was and about an individual called Hamza who had threatened their members. As a consequence, the appellant did not return to Lebanon but his mother, who was visiting with him, did so and she was questioned about the appellant on her return and the appellant’s father was also detained and interrogated after that. The appellant feared return to Lebanon and claimed asylum. The appellant was 16 when he claimed asylum and 17 when he was interviewed. His application was refused on 13 July 2023 and he appealed. The respondent did not accept that the appellant had ever come to the adverse attention of Ansar Allah and/or Hezbollah.

First-tier Tribunal Decision

4. The Judge noted that the appellant had submitted witness statements from himself, his brother (TMAA), his father, his mother and his sister BMAA. The Judge did not accept the credibility of the claim for the following reasons:
(i) It was not credible that the appellant would have taken the risk of leaving through the airport if he had been detained by Ansar Allah the previous day. It was not credible that he would not have told his family that he had been so detained [45].
(ii) The appellant was inconsistent about whether he had obvious bruising as a consequence of being beaten [46-47].
(iii) It was not accepted that, if the appellant’s father had sent him a voice note informing him of the Ansar Allah raid, that the appellant would have deleted that voice note [48-49].
(iv) The appellant had not provided a consistent account of his claimed incitement of others against Ansar Allah and his account was inconsistent with the background evidence [50-51].
(v) It was not plausible that the appellant was apprehended by Ansar Allah in the way he claimed [52].
(vi) It was not clear why no action had been taken against the appellant by Ansar Allah earlier on, if his account was reliable [54].
(vii) It was not plausible that the appellant would have gone near the headquarters of Ansar Allah and his explanation for doing so was not accepted [54-55].
(viii) His account of his movements immediately after he was released by Ansar Allah was inconsistent [56].
(ix) The appellant had failed to fully explain why Ansar Allah held the appellant accountable for the threats that his friend, Hamza, had made [57].
(x) If the appellant had not incited against Ansar Allah or Hezbollah, then he would not have been detained and the subsequent claimed events would not have occurred [58].
(xi) Considering the evidence in the round the appellant’s claim was not credible. It was inconsistent with the background evidence and implausible. Little weight was attached to the evidence given by his family which had the appearance of being put together to support the appellant [59].

Grounds of Appeal

5. The appellant applied for permission to appeal to the First-tier Tribunal and relied on one ground of appeal arguing that the Judge had failed to consider the witness evidence.
(i) The appellant had provided two witness statements from his mother, his three sisters and three from his father and brother, as well as a joint further statement from his parents. The Judge had failed to attach weight to the written evidence. He made no reference at all to the statements from two of the appellant’s sisters.
(ii) The Judge appeared to find that the appellant was incredible and therefore concluded that all the witness evidence must also be unreliable., contrary to Mbanga v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2005] EWCA Civ 367. The wording of the finding in paragraph 59 indicated that the Judge did not place weight on the witness statements because they were statements from the appellant’s family members and thus his reason for rejecting that evidence was contrary to case law including AKF Afghanistan v. Secretary of State for the Home Department [2007] EWCA Civ 535.
(iii) The witness statements were important because they provided firsthand knowledge of the appellant’s father’s conversation with Hamza, the raid by Ansar Allah on the appellant’s home and the leaving of the voice note by the appellant’s father, and the appellant’s parents’ interrogation.
(iv) The Judge should have considered the appellant’s brother TMA to be a credible witness as his asylum claim was accepted by the respondent as set out in AA (Somalia) v. Secretary of State for the Home Department [2007] EWCA Civ 1040. The Judge had failed to explain why he rejected the appellant’s brother’s evidence.

6. By a decision dated 31 December 2025, First-tier Tribunal Judge Dixon granted permission to appeal on the grounds argued. It was also noted that the Judge had made a careful and comprehensive assessment of the appellant’s account at paragraphs 45 – 59 of the Judge’s decision.

7. In a Rule 24 response dated 26 August 2025 the respondent argued that the Judge was not required to list every piece of evidence and had clearly stated that he had assessed all the evidence and gave a reason for rejecting the witness statements.

8. The appellant has prepared a composite bundle and a skeleton argument.

9. Miss Laughton and Ms Nolan made submissions at the error of law hearing, which have been recorded.

Analysis

10. I have considered the First-tier Tribunal decision, the documentation that was before the First-tier Tribunal, the grounds of appeal, and the submissions made at the hearing, before reaching a decision. I bear in mind that where a relevant point is not expressly mentioned by the Tribunal, the court should be slow to infer that it has not been taken into account (MA (Somalia) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2020] UKSC 49.) Further, an appellate court should not rush to find an error because they might have reached a different conclusion on the facts or expressed themselves differently (AH (Sudan) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2007] UKHL 49 and KM v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWCA Civ 693).

11. The primary argument advanced by Ms Laughton is that although the Judge has specifically stated that he had looked at all the evidence in the round, he had failed to address evidence relating to the core account. The Judge had failed to address at all the written evidence of the appellant’s sister BMAA, and in particular her evidence regarding the raid, the evidence of the appellant’s mother regarding the voice notes, the evidence of his parents regarding their interrogations and, finally, the evidence of the appellant’s father regarding his meeting with Hamza and being threatened in his statement dated 13 December 2023. He has not referred to the appellant ‘s brother’s evidence in the part of the decision dealing with his findings.

12. Ms Nolan relied on paragraph 2(iii), (iv) and (v) of Gabriele Volpi & Delta Ltd v Matteo Volpi [2022] EWCA Civ 464 which are set out below:
(iii) An appeal court is bound, unless there is compelling reason to the contrary, to assume that the trial Judge has taken the whole of the evidence into his consideration. The mere fact that a Judge does not mention a specific piece of evidence does not mean that he overlooked it.
(iv) The validity of the findings of fact made by a trial Judge is not aptly tested by considering whether the judgment presents a balanced account of the evidence. The trial Judge must of course consider all the material evidence (although it need not all be discussed in his judgment). The weight which he gives to it is however pre-eminently a matter for him.
v) An appeal court can therefore set aside a judgment on the basis that the Judge failed to give the evidence a balanced consideration only if the Judge's conclusion was rationally insupportable.

13. Relying on these paragraphs of Volpi, Ms Nolan has argued that the Judge does not need to directly record all the evidence that would go to corroborate the credibility of the appellant’s core account, in order to demonstrate that it has been considered. As observed in the decision granting permission, the Judge has set out a detailed account of his reasons for rejecting the claim at paragraphs 45 – 59. Within those paragraphs the Judge has referred to the family’s written evidence as follows:
(i) The judge sacks out a summary of the asylum statement of TMAA [27]
(ii) The Judge makes a reference to the appellant’s mother’s statement dated 20 June 2022 and the information in that that she had left Lebanon a few times to visit her eldest son. [45]
(iii) The Judge addresses the appellant’s father’s written evidence regarding the voice note that he stated he sent to the appellant, about the raid on their home in Lebanon, and the voice note that he received back from the appellant [49].
(iv) The Judge addresses the appellant’s father’s evidence in the same statement regarding the appellant’s activities against Ansar Allah [53].
(v) The Judge addresses the appellant’s father’s evidence regarding the raid on the family home that took place shortly after the appellant and his mother had left Lebanon [57].
(vi) The Judge then goes on at paragraph 59 to conclude that it was not reasonably likely that the appellant ever expressed any form of disapproval of Ansar Allah or Hezbollah. Therefore, the other events claimed are simply not true. He goes on to state that he has looked at all the evidence in the round and whilst accepting that the appellant was injured in crossfire in 2011, rejects the rest of the account. He finds the claim to be inconsistent and implausible. He goes on to reject the evidence of the family as created to bolster the appellant account.
(vii) The judge goes on to set out a passage from the appellant’s parents’ joint statement dated 6 January 2025 [61].

14. It has been erroneously argued in the skeleton that there was only one reference to the witness evidence (paragraph 57). As is clear from the above, the evidence of the appellant’s family is referred to in five paragraphs before the conclusion. Although the Judge has not addressed all the written evidence of the appellant’s parents, he has made detailed findings about aspects of that evidence including that of the appellant’s father relating to the appellant’s claimed political activity, the voice notes and the absence of documentary or audio evidence and the raid.

15. In relation to the Judge’s failure to refer to the written statements of the sisters and further evidence within the parents’ statements, it is first noted that the appellant’s parents and sisters did not attend the appeal to give oral evidence. It was expected that the appellant’s parents would join the appeal by video link. When they did not attend, the appellant’s representative made enquiries and requested that the appeal proceed without them. There was no application for an adjournment to enable them to give their evidence. Thus, in their absence, the Judge was entitled to address lesser weight to their written evidence because it had not been tested.

16. In the grounds it was argued that the Judge had failed to read or engage with the witness statements of the appellant’s sisters D and M. It is not accepted that the Judge’s failure to reference the statements indicates that he neither read them nor engaged with them. Neither D nor M were in Lebanon when the claimed events took place, save for when the appellant was injured as a child. M was present when the appellant was shot in crossfire. Their statements set out their conversations with the family during the events relied on during the period of the claim. The reference of the judge to the 2025 joint statement of the appellant’s parents after the conclusions reached in paragraph 59 is an illustration that the failure to mention a statement in the reasoning provided does not mean it has not been read.

17. Ms Laughton relied on AK (Failure to assess witnesses' evidence) Turkey [2004] UKIAT 00230. That cases focuses on the Judge’s failure to adequately summarise the oral evidence of witnesses or make an assessment as to their credibility. As set out at paragraph 59 above, the Judge has rejected the credibility of the evidence. AK is not essentially a case on written evidence of witnesses. However, it does relate to the evidence of TMAA.

18. The appellant’s brother TMAA, attended the hearing and adopted his three witness statements. He agreed he had no first time (sic) knowledge that his brother had incited against Ansar Allah. Ms Nolan and Ms Laughton agreed that this should be read as a reference to TMAA having no firsthand knowledge. The rest of his oral evidence is set out in paragraph 19. It has not been argued in the skeleton or by Miss Laughton that TMAA gave oral evidence which has not been set out.

19. Ms Laughton also relied on AM v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2026] EWCA Civ 159, where the First Tier Judge was again criticised for failing to adequately address the evidence of an oral witness. Ms Laughton relied, in particular, on paragraph 32 which concerns the First Tier Judge’s comment that the witness’s evidence “to some extent” did not support the appellant. It followed that it was not possible to discern which parts of the witness’s evidence on the essential elements of the claim the Judge had rejected and which he (implicitly) accepted.

20. Again, although Ms Laughton does not accept the reasons the Judge has given for rejecting the witness evidence, it is clear that he has rejected all of it.

21. The Judge in this case has, expressly engaged with parts of the written evidence of the key statements of the appellant’s parents dated 20 September 2022, but is that enough? The core of this claim can be summarized as the appellant’s criticism of Ansar Allah, being apprehended and beaten, the appellant’s departure, the appellant’s family home being raided, voice notes about that raid, and the subsequent separate questioning of the appellant's parents. The Judge has set out detailed reasoning for his conclusions in relation to most of these issues but has not gone on to deal with the alleged questioning of the appellant’s parents.

22. At a set out above, at paragraph 59, the Judge concludes, having considered all the evidence, that he does not accept the account that the appellant incited against Ansar Allah and so the rest of the claim must fall. Absent the full reasoning that proceeds this conclusion, this may have comprised a material error. It is quite possible that there could have been difficulties with the account relating to incitement, but the evidence relating to the subsequent core events were so persuasive, that it outweighed those difficulties with the initial incitement. Nonetheless, reading the decision is a whole, it is clear that the Judge did not find the rest of the account persuasive, he has given detailed reasons for rejecting the key events that he addressed.

23. To take the key events in chronological order, at paragraphs 50 – 51 and 53 the Judge deals with the evidence regarding the appellant’s incitement against Ansar Allah. He finds the appellant’s claims to have been inconsistent with the background evidence regarding Ansar Allah’s presence and claimed activities in the refugee camp and internally inconsistent regarding his own activity. In relation to the appellant’s father’s evidence, the Judge does not accept that the appellant’s father would have learnt about the appellant’s political activity from others in the neighbourhood and yet the appellant was able to continue with that activity for a further month without any adverse reaction from Ansar Allah. The Judge has not specifically referred to the written or oral evidence of TMAA, however it is noted by the Judge in paragraph 54 that the appellant had confirmed that TMAA had told him to stop what he was doing.

24. The Judge has provided detailed reasons and indicated earlier in the decision that he did not regard the evidence of TMAA as of great weight because his understanding of the appellant’s activities came from the appellant’s father and was not firsthand.

25. At paragraph 52 the Judge states that he is troubled by the appellant’s account that he was apprehended by Ansar Allah when he happened to be walking past their HQ, rather than him being sought out by Ansar Allah because of his public criticism. At paragraph 54 he states it is implausible that the appellant would voluntarily walk past their HQ, especially in the light of the claimed warnings he had received from his father and TMAA, that Ansar Allah might kill him. A paragraph 55 the Judge sets out and rejects the appellant’s explanation for walking past Ansar Allah’s HQ.

26. In paragraph 56 the Judge notes the inconsistent evidence the appellant gave for his movements after he was released by Ansar Allah. At paragraphs 46–47 the Judge sets out his reasons for finding the appellant’s explanation of his mother’s failure to notice that her son had been beaten as implausible, and inconsistent with his evidence as to his friend, Hamza, noticing that he had been beaten.

27. The Judge has set out in paragraph 45 that he found it difficult to accept that the appellant would not have told his family that he had been beaten by Ansar Allah before he and his mother left through the airport. He states that he did not accept the appellant would have taken the risk to leave in this way and noted that TMAA had left following similar circumstances but had left in disguise by ship. The Judge concludes that the account of the appellant’s departure implausible.

28. At paragraph 48 – 49 the Judge engages with the father’s written evidence regarding the voice notes. He notes that it was “odd” that the father would leave a disturbing message on the telephone number of his young son rather than his elder son or his wife. The Judge rejects the appellant’s explanation that he did not know that he should not delete the voice note and did not accept the appellant’s evidence that he had deleted the voice note before he took legal advice. He notes that the absence of either the voice-note of the father or the voice note of the appellant despite the record of such notes, at least originally, being available on both the appellant’s phone and his father’s phone. It is correct, as argued by Ms Laughton, that the Judge has not expressly recorded that the appellant’s sister BMAA and his mother stated in their statements that they had listened to the voice notes. I am not satisfied that the statement of TMMA is clear in this regard. He does not expressly state that he listened to the voice notes. Nonetheless, the Judge has given detailed reasons for rejecting the account and I am not satisfied that he is required to set out that there were further statements which corroborated this part of the appellant’s claim. His failure to reference them does not mean that he had not considered them.

29. At paragraph 57 the Judge contrasts the evidence in the appellant’s father’s statement against the appellant’s own evidence in relation to what was said to the father during the raid. He concludes by stating in paragraph 58 that he does not accept the appellant’s account that he was ever involved in political activities against Ansar Allah. The Judge’s decision does not indicate that the Judge dismissed the appellant’s account on the basis of the appellant’s own evidence but took into account the written evidence of the witness. Again, the Judge has not made express reference to the statement of the appellant’s sister, BMAA, who stated that she was present when the house was raided. She has said in her statement that she did not hear everything they said, and she did not understand everything either. She has given a summarised account of what was said by Ansar Allah. Again, the Judge’s failure to make specific reference to this evidence is not an indication that he did not consider it. In any event, I am not satisfied that the information in her statement addresses the reasons that the Judge has given for rejecting this part of the account.

30. The Judge has also not made any reference to the written witness evidence of the appellant‘s parents in relation to their interrogation by the authorities in Lebanon. Instead, the Judge has set out reasons for dismissing the appellant’s account due to concerns with events that preceded these claimed interrogations. I do not find that to comprise a material error. The Judge’s reasoning is that if these prior events did not occur then the subsequent events and the whole account is rejected. He has set out in detail his reasons for rejecting the previous stages of the claim and reached conclusions which were reasonably open to him on the evidence. I am mindful that this last stage of the account (the interrogations) is primarily evidenced by written evidence, and the Judge was entitled to attribute lesser weight to that. The Judge has not found the appellant to be credible witness and so it follows that his own evidence as to these interrogations has not been accepted.

31. Ms Laughton’s second submission, relying on Mbanga, was that the Judge had rejected the appellant’s account without weighing it against the witness and written evidence. At paragraphs 5 and 6 of the grounds it is claimed that the Judge has dismissed all the witness evidence with the one statement in paragraph 59 and that the witness evidence is rejected because the Judge has found the appellant not to be credible. I am not satisfied that that reflects the reasoning in the decision as a whole. As set out above, the Judge referred to the witness evidence as well as the appellant’s evidence and the sentence in paragraph 59 is his concluding finding on all the material before him.

32. It has been argued, on the basis of the content of paragraph 59, that the Judge has rejected the witness evidence because it originates from the appellant’s family members, contrary to caselaw such as AK Afghanistan v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2007] EWCA Civ 535. Paragraph 59 records as follows:

“I am unable to attach much weight to any of the evidence given by his family which has all the appearance of being put together simply to support the appellant’s narrative. It may well be that in view of the success of TMMA’s claim for international protection his family have decided to construct a similar claim involving alleged criticism of an associate of Hezbollah”

33. I am not satisfied that the Judge is there saying that he has rejected the evidence because it originates from family members. He is making a clear finding that flows from the conclusions that he has already made, that he does not consider the evidence of the family members to be reliable. He is not rejecting their evidence because they are related. He has instead suggestive a motive for why he has been presented with evidence that he has found not to be reliable.

34. It is argued by the appellant that the Judge was required to provide reasons for rejecting the evidence of TMAA because he had been granted refugee status. Pursuant to AA Somalia, the Judge had to explain why his credibility had been rejected. Ms Nolan relied on the earlier decision of AC Somalia [2005] UKAIT 00124 and submitted that there was no such obligation on the Judge.

35. TMAA’s own asylum statement is in the bundle and was summarized by the Judge ]27]. He was granted asylum in 2017 by the respondent without appeal. In his statement he said that he became critical of Ansar Allah himself partly because his younger brother (the appellant) was shot and injured by them in crossfire in 2011. TMAA left in 2016, five years before the appellant claims to have become politically active. The Judge accepts that the appellant was injured in cross-fire as a child [ 59]. There is no other overlap of the factual background. I am not satisfied that the case law requires a Judge to explain why he reaches a different conclusion from the respondent as to the credibility of a witness, when it was a different account that was accepted by the respondent.

41. For all the above reasons, I do not find the appellant has shown that the Judge has made a material error of law.

Notice of Decision

42. The appellant’s appeal is dismissed

43. The decision of the First-tier Tribunal Judge does not contain an error on a point of law so the decision stands.

F Ripley
Deputy Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

31 March 2026