Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER Case No: UI-2026-000657 (1)
UI-2026-000659 (2)
First-tier Tribunal No:
PA/63160/2024; LP/10566/2024 (1)
PA/62608/2024; LP/10567/2024 (2)

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:
On 23 June 2026

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE REEDS
DEPUTY UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE GREER

Between

DMA (1)
LDM (2)
Appellants
and

THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr Doerfel, Counsel instructed on behalf of the Appellants.
For the Respondent: Mr Wain, Senior Presenting Officer

Heard on 27 May 2026

DECISION AND REASONS
1. The Appellants appeal, with permission, against the decision of First-tier Tribunal Judge Fisher promulgated on 7 May 2025 dismissing their appeals on asylum, humanitarian protection and human rights grounds.
2. An anonymity order was made by the First-tier Tribunal pursuant to Rule 13 of the Tribunal Procedure (First-tier Tribunal) (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) Rules 2014. No application was made to vary or discharge that order and we maintain it.
3. The first Appellant is a citizen of Iraq born on 24 April 1967. The second Appellant, his daughter, is also a citizen of Iraq and was born on 10 January 2007. They arrived in the United Kingdom on 20 September 2022 together with the first Appellant’s wife and another child, who were treated as dependants to the first Appellant’s claim.
4. The basis of the Appellants’ protection claim can be summarised as follows. The first Appellant had operated a carpentry business in Iraq. He claimed that when that business experienced financial difficulties he entered into a business arrangement with a man named B to import and distribute contraband goods originating from Turkey. According to the first Appellant, during one such journey B failed to stop at a checkpoint, was shot and later died. The first Appellant claimed that B’s brothers blamed him for the death and reported the illegal business to the Popular Mobilisation Forces (“PMF”). He asserted that he feared both B’s brothers and the PMF and that this led to his departure from Iraq with his family.
5. The Respondent accepted the Appellants’ nationality and identity but rejected the substance of the claim. In decisions dated 18 and 19 April 2024 the Respondent considered the account to be inconsistent, lacking in detail and implausible and concluded that the Appellants had not established a well-founded fear of persecution or a real risk of serious harm on return to Iraq.
6. The appeals came before First-tier Tribunal Judge Fisher on 6 May 2025. At the hearing the Appellants accepted that the factual basis of their claim did not engage a Refugee Convention reason and pursued the appeals on humanitarian protection and Article 3 grounds. The Judge dismissed the asylum appeals, the humanitarian protection claims and the human rights appeals.
7. In summary, the Judge rejected the first Appellant’s account as wholly lacking in credibility. The Judge found it implausible that the first Appellant would enter into an illegal smuggling enterprise with a person he barely knew and without any relevant experience; found the evidence concerning the operation of the business vague and lacking credibility; considered aspects of the account concerning the transportation and sale of the goods implausible; identified inconsistencies in the evidence relating to the alleged checkpoint incident and its aftermath; and concluded that the entire account concerning the smuggling of contraband goods was fabricated. The Judge further concluded that the first Appellant was an economic migrant who had come to the United Kingdom for financial betterment.
8. The Judge also rejected the Appellants’ Article 3 claim based upon lack of documentation. Whilst accepting that the Appellants were not in possession of identity documents, the Judge was not satisfied that the documents had been taken by an agent or that the Appellants lacked family assistance in Iraq. The Judge concluded that family members could either send documents to the Appellants or meet them upon return and therefore dismissed the Article 3 claim.
The appeal before the Upper Tribunal
9. The Appellants sought permission to appeal. The grounds may be summarised as follows.
Ground 1: Credibility and plausibility
10. The Appellants submitted that the First-tier Tribunal erred by assessing the credibility of the first Appellant’s account on the basis of the Judge’s own view of plausibility rather than by evaluating the evidence in its proper context. The grounds contend that the Judge repeatedly rejected aspects of the account because they did not make sense to him personally and thereby approached the evidence from an impermissibly subjective standpoint.
11. The Appellants argued that the Judge failed to consider that individuals may engage in risky or illegal activity for financial reasons notwithstanding the dangers involved, and that the Judge’s conclusions were based on assumptions as to how the first Appellant and his business associate ought to have behaved. The grounds further submit that adverse findings were drawn from matters about which the first Appellant could only speculate, including why B disclosed the business to his brothers.
Ground 2: Failure to consider corroborative evidence
12. The Appellants contend that the Judge failed to engage with documentary evidence said to corroborate the first Appellant’s account. In particular, reliance is placed upon Facebook Messenger communications involving the second Appellant and her friend in Iraq together with translated online news reports.
13. The grounds submit that the news reports contained accounts consistent with the Appellants’ case, namely that the first Appellant and B were involved in smuggling contraband goods, that B was shot at a checkpoint, and that subsequent events involved members of B’s family and the first Appellant’s brother. It is argued that this evidence was material to the credibility assessment and required specific consideration.
14. Whilst the Judge referred briefly to the Facebook evidence, the Appellants argue that he failed to engage with its content or with the news reports and failed to explain why that evidence was rejected. It is submitted that the omission renders the overall credibility findings unsafe.
Ground 3: Documentation and Article 3
15. The Appellants further contend that the Judge materially erred in assessing the claim based on lack of identity documentation and risk on return.
16. First, it is argued that insufficient attention was given to the question of the proposed point of return to Iraq and its significance when assessing risk and feasibility of return.
17. Secondly, the grounds challenge the Judge’s treatment of evidence concerning the Appellants’ attendance at the Iraqi Embassy. It is submitted that documentary evidence, including photographs and appointment material, demonstrated that attempts had been made to obtain documentation and that the Judge erred in rejecting this evidence solely by reference to his wider credibility findings.
18. Thirdly, the Appellants argue that the Judge failed properly to consider the Facebook evidence and associated material concerning efforts to contact relatives in Iraq. It is submitted that this evidence was relevant to whether family members remained available to assist with documentation and that the Judge unlawfully dismissed it by reference to adverse credibility findings without first evaluating the evidence on its own merits.
19. Finally, the Appellants submit that the Judge failed to engage with the news reports said to corroborate the death of the first Appellant’s brother. It is argued that this evidence was directly relevant to the finding that family members remained available to provide documentation or assistance upon return.
20. Permission to appeal was granted by Upper Tribunal Judge Hirst on 23 March 2026.
21. In granting permission, the Judge observed that it was arguable that the First-tier Tribunal had erred by failing to consider or make findings concerning online news reports and translated material contained within the Appellants’ evidence. The Judge noted that whilst the Tribunal was not required to accept such evidence, it was arguably required to consider it and give reasons for accepting or rejecting it. Permission was granted on all grounds, although it was observed that grounds 1 and 3 appeared to have less merit.
22. The appeal therefore comes before the Upper Tribunal to determine whether the decision of the First-tier Tribunal involved the making of an error on a point of law.
Decision on error of law
23. We now turn to the issue of whether the decision of the FtTJ involved the making of an error on a point of law. Given the nature of the errors alleged, we consider it convenient to address Ground 2 first. In our judgment, the FtTJ failed to engage with the news articles which were capable of independently corroborating aspects of the first Appellant’s account, if found to be reliable. As we explain below, that omission rendered the credibility assessment incomplete and amounted to a material error of law.
24. At the hearing before us, Mr Doerfel developed ground 2 with two submissions. The first related to news articles purportedly appearing on the sharpress.net website dated 12th February 2022 (consolidated bundle, page 485) and Gali Kurdistan Satellite Channel dated 12th November 2022 (consolidated bundle, Page 491). These documents, Mr Doerfel argued, were not mentioned either directly or indirectly on the face of the decision. This is important, he said, because the documents had the potential to independently corroborate aspects of the Appellant’s account. This being so, the Tribunal was obliged to deal with the documents directly and explain what weight, if any, the Tribunal attached to those documents, when taken in the round with the other evidence before the Tribunal.
25. The Second submission related to screenshots of a conversation between the second Appellant and Shagwll, who is said to be a friend of the Second Appellant, over Facebook messenger (consolidated bundle, Page 70). They describe Shagwll’s attempts to locate the Second Appellant’s uncle and her discovery that the Appellant’s uncle had died, a central claim in the case. Mr Doerfel accepted that the FtTJ referred to those documents directly at [21]. However, he argued that the determination provides no reasoned consideration of those documents on the face of the decision. Instead, the FtT rejects those documents having already rejected the credibility of the claim, and rejects the documents on that basis. This, Mr Doerfel argued is a Mibanga error and renders the decision unsafe.
26. In reply, Mr Wain argued that, read as a whole, it is tolerably clear what the FtT made of the documents. The reference to, “Facebook evidence,” at [21], in his submission, should be taken to encompass all of the documentary evidence before the Tribunal, including both the Facebook messages themselves and the news articles. This is because the Second Appellant came to be aware of those documents after weblinks were sent to her by Shagwll over Facebook Messenger. As for the suggestion that the Judge fell into a Mibanga error, this is not made out. Rather, this is simply a case of the Judge starting with the oral evidence before turning to the documentary evidence. In the same paragraph, the Judge states that the Facebook evidence, “has to be considered in the round.” This, he argued, was sufficient reasoning.
27. It is a well-established principle of asylum law that if a tribunal finds oral evidence to be implausible, incredible or unreliable, or a document to be worthy of no weight whatsoever, it is necessary to state as much in the determination and for such findings to be supported by reasons. This proposition flows from ordinary principles of law relating to the duty to give reasons. The rationale underpinning the duty to give reasons is generally said to be threefold: to enable the parties to know why they have won or lost; to enable an appellate court to understand the reasons for a decision so that it can perform its supervisory function; and finally, to enable the public to know why a decision of public significance was taken. Summarising the higher court authorities on the point, LJ Green recounted the following principles in SB (Sri Lanka) v The Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA Civ 160 at [62]:
The duty is contextual. The level of detail required will vary considerably from case to case and I am not suggesting that in every tribunal case a detailed evidential exegesis is required. To suggest as much would be impractical and inconsistent with the recognised limits on an appellate court interfering with the evaluative judgments of trial courts: In Piglowska v Piglowski [1999] UKHL 27 Lord Hoffman stated: "...the appellate court must bear in mind the advantage which the first instance judge had in seeing the parties and the other witnesses. This is well understood on questions of credibility and findings of primary fact. But it goes further than that. It applies also to the judge's evaluation of those facts. ...". Lord Hoffman cited his own judgment in Biogen Inc v Medeva [1996] UKHL 18 (a patent case) to the effect that "… findings of fact, even by the most meticulous judge, are inherently an incomplete statement of the impression which was made upon him by the primary evidence. His expressed findings are always surrounded by a penumbra of imprecision as to emphasis, relative weight, minor qualification and nuance … of which time and language do not permit exact expression, but which may play an important part in the judge's overall evaluation."
28. Mr Wain drew our attention to QC (verification of documents; Mibanga duty) [2021] UKUT 33 (IAC) in which Mr Justice Lane gave the following guidance at [56] – [57]:
56. The relevance of an individual’s credibility to their particular claim accordingly 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 can be understood. The significance of a piece of evidence that emanates or purports to emanate from a third party source may well depend upon what is at stake in terms of the individual’s credibility. An arrest warrant from Afghanistan that states an individual was arrested on 1 April 2020 in Afghanistan may not advance that individual’s claim if there is reliable EURODAC evidence that the individual was fingerprinted whilst in detention in Germany on that very date. In such a scenario, the judge still has a duty to explain why (assuming he or she so finds) the arrest warrant does not assist the individual’s case; but the reasons are likely to be relatively straightforward. In the absence of the EURODAC evidence, the requirement of what will constitute legally adequate reasons for rejecting the individual’s claim may well be more onerous.
57. To sum up, 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.
29. We accept Mr Wain’s submission that the FtTJ was not required to refer to each and every document contained within the papers before the First-tier Tribunal. However, the greater the apparent cogency and relevance of a particular piece of evidence, the greater the need for a judicial fact-finder to demonstrate that due regard has been given to that evidence. In our judgment, the newspaper articles, if reliable, had the potential to lend support to the first Appellant’s claim which stood independently of the FtT’s impression of the Appellant as a witness. This is because they purportedly originate from independent sources and appear capable of providing independent corroboration of the Appellant’s account concerning the existence of an international smuggling operation and killings said to have arisen as a consequence of it. That evidence was therefore capable of bearing directly upon the assessment of whether the Appellant’s account was reasonably likely to be true. In those circumstances, the documentary evidence was of a kind that required express consideration by the Tribunal.
30. We do not accept Mr Wain’s submission that Paragraph [21], read together with the preceding paragraphs, contains sufficient reasoning to demonstrate that the Tribunal had regard to the news articles when reaching its conclusions. We do not agree that [19] and [20] are to be taken to be a wholesale rejection of the Second Appellant’s overall credibility as a witness and therefore a rejection of all of the documents that she provided. This is because [19] does not purport to be a wholesale rejection of her credibility. Rather, it is a rejection of the weight to be attached to her oral evidence because her evidence was second hand hearsay, reliant upon the first Appellant as its source. But both the Facebook messages and the weblinks contained therein, if reliable, stood independently of the First Appellant. This being so, in our judgment, it is not tolerably clear that the decision contains sufficient reasoning to entitle the parties to understand how that documentary evidence was weighed in the round with the other evidence.
31. It may be that the FtTJ would ultimately have been entitled to attach limited weight to this evidence, given the obvious questions concerning its provenance, the delay in bringing it to the Respondent’s attention, and the unsatisfactory manner in which it was presented within the Appellants’ bundle. However, that conclusion was not inevitable. In those circumstances, we are satisfied that the Tribunal was required to address this evidence directly, explain how it was to be evaluated in the context of the evidence as a whole, and give reasons, however brief, for the weight attached to it.
32. It is not difficult to have sympathy for the FtTJ in this appeal. The presentation of the Appellants’ bundle fell well below what First-tier Tribunal judges are entitled to expect in the current era of procedural rigour. The Judge was confronted with an unusually voluminous bundle compiled in a counterintuitive order and containing substantial duplication. As Mr Doerfel realistically acknowledged in his submissions, the news articles and their translations were “tucked away” in a section of the bundle where the Tribunal would not ordinarily expect to find case-specific evidence, namely within a lengthy collection of background material of only limited relevance to the issues in dispute. Whilst the news articles were accompanied by English translations, the translations did not appear immediately before or after the source documents and it required considerable effort, together with the assistance of the advocates, to correlate the translated documents with the source material at the hearing before us. We also note that the documents were referred to only briefly in the Appellants’ skeleton argument and without page references. Although mentioned in the first Appellant’s witness statement, they were not exhibited in a satisfactory manner. We further accept that the documents were not specifically drawn to the Judge’s attention in closing submissions and do not appear to have featured prominently during cross-examination.
33. Taking those matters together, it is understandable how the significance of this material may have been overlooked. Nevertheless, the question before us is not whether the omission was understandable, but whether it was a material error of law. Given the potentially corroborative nature of the evidence and the centrality of credibility to the determination of the appeal, we are satisfied that the failure to engage with this evidence rendered the credibility assessment incomplete. In those circumstances, the decision involved the making of a material error of law.
34. The failure to engage with the documentary evidence identified above is sufficient, without more, to render the credibility assessment unsafe and the decision materially flawed. In those circumstances, the decision must be set aside.
35. In light of that conclusion, it is unnecessary for us to reach any concluded view on Ground 1. We nevertheless address Ground 3 briefly because it was the subject of detailed submissions before us. We do not consider that Ground 3 identifies a separate material error of law.
36. We accept that, viewed in isolation, paragraph 21 of the decision may suggest that the Tribunal approached the evidence relating to the location of the Appellants’ identity documents through the lens of its adverse credibility findings on the core protection claim. At first sight, such an approach appears capable of engaging the concerns identified by May LJ in AM & Anor v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2026] EWCA Civ 159 regarding the treatment of credibility as a “seamless robe”, whereby rejection of one aspect of an account automatically leads to the rejection of other distinct aspects of the evidence.
37. However, the present case is materially different. As Mr Wain submitted, and as the FtT skeleton argument confirms, counsel for the Appellants expressly advanced the case before the First-tier Tribunal on the basis that the issues stood or fell together. In substance, the Tribunal was invited to proceed on the footing that if it rejected the Appellants’ account concerning the alleged smuggling operation, there was no independent basis upon which the remaining aspects of the claim, including the documentation claim, could succeed. In those circumstances, it is difficult to criticise the FtTJ for adopting the framework within which the case was presented.
38. Accordingly, if Ground 3 stood alone, we would not have been persuaded that it disclosed a material error of law. The Judge was entitled to approach the documentation issue in the manner that he did, given the way in which the case was advanced before him. The significance of Ground 3 lies instead in the fact that the underlying credibility findings cannot safely stand for the reasons we have already identified in our consideration of Ground 2.
39. For those reasons we are satisfied that the decision of the FtTJ involved the making of an error on a point of law and that the decision should be set aside. Having considered the practice statement recited and the decision of the Court of Appeal in AEB v SSHD[2022] EWCA Civ 1512 and that of the Upper Tribunal in Begum (Remaking or remittal) Bangladesh [2023] UKUT 46, and in the light of the overriding objective we are satisfied that the appeal falls within paragraph 7.2 (b) as it will be necessary to undertake an assessment of all the factual evidence, oral and documentary, and undertake an assessment of the credibility of the claim when reaching a decision and thus the appeal should be remitted to the FtT for hearing.
Notice of Decision:
40. The decision of the FtTJ involved the making of an error of law and the decision of the FtTJ shall be set aside and remitted to the FtT.

J. Greer

Deputy Upper Tribunal Judge Greer