Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER Case No: UI-2026-002204
First-tier Tribunal No: PA/00362/2025

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:
On 17 August 2026

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE KEBEDE

Between

FI
(Anonymity Order made)
Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr K Wood of Immigration Advice Service
For the Respondent: Mr A McVeety, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Manchester Civil Justice Centre on 31 July 2026

DECISION AND REASONS
1. The appellant is a citizen of Afghanistan whose date of birth is recorded as 1 January 2004. He appeals, with permission, against the decision of the First-tier Tribunal dismissing his appeal against the respondent’s decision to refuse his asylum and human rights claims.
2. The appellant arrived in the UK on 30 March 2024 by boat from France, having left Afghanistan in October 2021 and travelled through Iran, Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, Austria, Switzerland, and Germany. He attended a screening interview on 1 April 2024 and a full asylum interview on 13 December 2024. His claim was refused on 16 January 2025. He appealed against that decision and his appeal is the subject of these proceedings.
3. The basis of the appellant’s asylum claim is that he fears being killed in an honour killing by the family of S, a woman from his village with whom he became romantically involved and with whom he ran away. The appellant claims that he became secretly romantically involved with S in September or October 2021 and that her parents rejected a marriage proposal from his parents, following which they ran away together to Jalalabad. The appellant claims that when S’s family became aware of that they went to his house and threatened his family if S was not returned that evening, that S then returned to her family and was killed by them, and that he fled Afghanistan fearing both S’s family and the Taliban.
4. The respondent, in her refusal decision, did not accept any of the appellant’s claim. The respondent noted various inconsistencies and omissions in the appellant’s claim. The respondent considered that the appellant had failed to provide sufficient detail about S’s age, what they would talk about and do together, and about the proposals made to her family, and that he had provided inconsistent accounts about how they met. The respondent concluded that the claim was not credible and that in any event the appellant would be at no risk on return to Afghanistan, particularly given that S had been returned home and the relationship had ended. The respondent considered that the appellant’s removal to Afghanistan would not breach his human rights.
5. The appellant appealed against the respondent’s decision. His appeal came before First-tier Tribunal Fox on 10 December 2025. The judge found the appellant’s account to be inconsistent and lacking in detail. The judge referred to documents which had been provided by the appellant but concluded that little weight could be attributed to them. The judge was not satisfied that the appellant had demonstrated that S existed and concluded that he had not presented a credible account. He concluded that the appellant would be at no risk on return to Afghanistan and he accordingly dismissed the appeal, in a decision promulgated on 2 March 2026.
6. The appellant sought permission to appeal against the judge’s decision on two grounds. Firstly, that the judge had permitted a procedural unfairness to operate in the proceedings by making findings based on matters which were not raised by the respondent and not put to the appellant at the hearing. Secondly, that the judge had failed to provide any or adequate reasons for findings of fact on material matters and that there was a lack of clarity in his findings.
7. Permission was granted in the First-tier Tribunal. The respondent provided a rule 24 response opposing the appeal, submitting that the grounds were no more than an attempt to re-argue the appeal.
8. The matter came before me for a hearing. I heard submissions from both parties.
9. Mr Wood submitted, with regard to ground one, that procedural unfairness arose from the judge taking points against the appellant which did not form part of the respondent’s case in the refusal decision, such as his reference at [23] to the absence of photographs of S on the appellant’s phone and at [44] to the lack of receipts or invoices from the hotel where he claimed to have stayed with S. As for ground two, Mr Wood submitted that [18] to [20] of the decision were a collection of thoughts rather than findings, in which the judge started with an adverse finding and then drew back from that, so that there was a lack of clarity as to what his findings were. He submitted that these paragraphs formed a material part of the judge’s findings, and so there was a material error of law in the decision.
10. In his submissions Mr McVeety accepted, with regard to ground one, that the judge had made findings on issues not specifically aired at the hearing but he relied on the many other findings which were based on issues that were aired at the hearing and which were unchallenged and went to the core of the appellant’s claim. As such, he submitted, there was sufficient to dismiss the appeal and those matters were not material. With regard to ground two, Mr McVeety submitted that he agreed that some of the judge’s findings were a public airing of his thoughts and that the findings were therefore unclear, but that there was sufficient in the subsequent findings at [23] and [24] which were tolerably clear. Therefore the vagueness in those paragraphs was not material.
11. In response, Mr Wood submitted that the decision was not safe, given the number of errors, and that it could have been decided differently had the errors not been made. He submitted that the criteria relied upon by the judge at [24] from the country evidence did not exclude the situation in which the appellant and S had met with each other.
Analysis
12. I do not accept the assertion in the first ground that the judge’s decision involved procedural unfairness. The appellant was fully aware that the case against him was that the respondent did not accept the existence of his claimed relationship with S. He was aware from the refusal decision of the concerns about the lack of detail in his claim, in relation to S’s age, when they first met, what attracted him to her, what they talked about, the marriage proposals made and the circumstances of their elopement. He was also aware of the concerns as to inconsistencies in his claim, arising in relation to his account of the circumstances under which he and S met, the awareness of the risks they faced and the extent to which the relationship was kept hidden. The appellant would therefore would have been fully cognisant of the issues which needed to be addressed for his appeal.
13. As such, the judge was entitled to draw the adverse conclusions that he did from the appellant’s failure to address those concerns and from the absence of evidence that the appellant could reasonably have accessed to support his claim, as he did at [23] and [43]/[44]. As the judge pointed out in his decision, the appellant was in contact with his family and had managed to obtain some documentary evidence from them for his appeal, and it was therefore entirely reasonable for him to give weight to the absence of other evidence which could reasonably have been obtained by the appellant to show that S was a real person and that there was a genuine relationship. This was not a case of the judge relying upon issues which had not been identified by the respondent, but rather the judge giving weight to a failure to address matters relating to the principal issue in the appeal. It was entirely different to the circumstances arising in Lata. Furthermore, the judge was not required to put each and every point to the appellant at the hearing, and there was no unfairness in him not specifically putting the absence of such evidence to the appellant at the hearing. I find no merit in the assertion to the contrary.
14. In any event nothing material arises from the judge’s findings in those paragraphs, given the numerous other reasons for not accepting the appellant’s account of his relationship with S.
15. Turning to those other reasons it is the appellant’s case, as raised in the second ground, that the judge’s findings were unclear and involved an impermissible degree of uncertainty. Indeed, as Mr McVeety accepted, the judge’s findings at [18] to [20] do appear to be a public airing of his thoughts rather than singular findings of fact. Nevertheless what is clear from those paragraphs, when taken together with paragraph [17], is that the judge had concerns about the appellant’s inability to give basic details relevant to the relationship such as a description of S or what he and S talked about and what attracted him to her and other matters which would reasonably be expected of him had he genuinely been in such a relationship. In so far as the judge set out his thought process in those paragraphs, it is apparent that he was assessing his concerns as against cultural expectations in Afghanistan and that he therefore undertook a rounded assessment in the relevant context. In addition, and aside from those paragraphs, the judge went on to identify various inconsistencies in the appellant’s account, as to the risks that he and S took in meeting with each other ([24] to [27]), as to S’s parents’ knowledge of the relationship ([29]), as to the fact that he was able to continue meeting S after her family had refused the proposal ([31]), and as to the level of secrecy of the relationship ([33]). None of those findings are challenged in the grounds. Neither is there any challenge to the judge’s adverse findings on the documentary evidence relied upon by the appellant at [49] to [54], in which the judge gave cogent reasons for concluding that the documents attracted little weight and did not amount to reliable evidence in support of the appellant’s claim.
16. Accordingly, when read as a whole, it is clear why the judge made the adverse findings that he did and why he reached the conclusions that he did. Having had the benefit of hearing from the appellant and observing how he answered the questions put to him, the judge ultimately found that he had failed to provide a clear and detailed account of material aspects of his relationship and had failed to address the concerns raised by the respondent. That was despite having had ample opportunity to do so and ample notice of the case against him. On that basis the judge was fully and properly entitled to make the decision that he did.
17. For all these reasons I do not accept that the grounds identify any errors of law in the judge’s decision. The appellant had a full and fair hearing. There was no procedural unfairness in the judge’s approach to assessing the appellant’s credibility. The appeal was dismissed for reasons which were fully and properly explained in the judge’s decision and which were entirely open to the judge on the evidence before him. The judge’s decision is accordingly upheld.
Notice of Decision
18. The making of the decision of the First-tier Tribunal did not involve a material error on a point of law requiring it to be set aside. The decision to dismiss the appeal stands.
Anonymity Order
The Anonymity Order previously made is continued.

Signed: S Kebede
Upper Tribunal Judge Kebede

Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

4 August 2026