Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER Case No: UI-2026-002950
First-tier Tribunal No:
PA/50469/2024
LP/08978/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

On 23rd of October 2026

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE BLUM

Between

Z J
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr Mohzam, counsel, instructed by Burton & Burton Solicitors
For the Respondent: Ms A Everett, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 16 October 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 and/or his family members. Failure to comply with this order could amount to a contempt of court.
DECISION AND REASONS
1. The appellant has been granted permission to appeal the decision of judge of the First-tier Tribunal (IAC) S Aziz (the judge) who, in a decision dated 5 November 2025, dismissed his appeal against the respondent’s decision dated 22 December 2023 to refuse his asylum and human rights claim.
Background
2. The appellant is a national of the Iraq of Kurdish ethnicity. He worked as a labourer in Erbil, which is within the Kurdish Region of Iraq (KRI). He is profoundly deaf. He claimed to have a well-founded fear of ill-treatment from the family of his former employer who died from a road injury. The appellant’s former employer mocked and abused his deafness after the appellant was late to work. The appellant returned home. Later that night the employer was killed by a road vehicle. The appellant claims that his employer’s family, including a cousin said to be influential and powerful, believe the appellant was involved in the killing. The employer and his family were part of the Khalani tribe which was said to be prominent. The police had visited the appellant’s home looking for him and they confiscated his identity cards. An agent was arranged to facilitate the appellant’s departure from Iraq from the Bagdad International Airport using his own passport and, through a circuitous route, he was eventually brought to the UK.
3. The respondent was unable to arrange a full asylum interview as she could not source a Kurdish Sorani sign language interpreter. The respondent however found, based on completed asylum questionnaires and the appellant’s statement, that the appellant had given inconsistent evidence and that some elements of his account were implausible. The respondent therefore rejected the appellant’s claim to fear for his life in the KRI or Iraq in general.
The appeal to the First-tier Tribunal (IAC) and the judge’s decision
4. The appellant appealed the respondent’s decision. At a full day hearing the appellant was able to give his evidence using relays of Arabic and English sign language interpreters.
5. In his decision the judge found himself unable to safely rely on the inconsistencies apparent from the face of the appellant’s various accounts because of concerns of misunderstanding and (honest) corruptions in the various stages of translation. The judge therefore placed no reliance on these inconsistencies.
6. The judge nevertheless found the appellant’s account of events that caused him to leave Iraq to be incredible. The judge’s conclusion was based on his assessment of the plausibility of the appellant’s account and the drawing of an adverse inference under section 8 of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004. The judge’s reasoning is contained from paragraphs 39 to 44 of his decision, which I set out in full.
39. Implausibility in the appellant’s account: The fact that an account may seem inherently unlikely does not mean that it is not true (HK v SSHD [2006] EWCA Civ 1037, [2006] 7 WLUK 545 see paras 27-30 and Y v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2006] EWCA Civ 1223, [2006] 7 WLUK 693, at paras 25-27). I factor this into account. I fully acknowledge that any adverse finding should be based on reasonably drawn inferences and consideration of the appellant’s social and cultural background i.e., considering the account in the context of the country evidence.
40. The appellant is quite clearly a vulnerable adult. He was born deaf and can only communicate using a sign language that is particular to his region. He does not claim to come from a powerful tribe or family. He claims to be an orphan, with both his parents passing away when he was much younger. He also has a brother who was born deaf and a cystic fibrosis. He says that following the death of their parents, his grandmother became their caregiver. The appellant has been a vulnerable adult both in Iraq and in the United Kingdom.
41. Set against the background of his special needs and his family circumstances, I simply do not find credible that the Khalani tribe would believe and hold him responsible for the death of Mahmoud Khalani (even applying the lower standard of proof). In particular, that they would hold responsible a very vulnerable young man and accuse him of having the means and ability to authorise/arrange the murder of someone through a road traffic accident and at such short notice. On what premise is this assumption made? That one day the appellant goes into work late. He is told off by his employer for being late, who mocks him (taking into account that as the appellant is deaf, anything verbal said by his employer would not be heard by him). That this causes the appellant to leave his workplace and go home. That the appellant is affronted by the abuse he received, because although he is deaf, he was able to understand enough from his employer’s body language to know that he was being insulted. That despite his vulnerabilities and his background, that the appellant feels so aggrieved by the insults he received that within the space of a few hours he is able to organise and arrange for someone to kill his employer through a road traffic accident. There is nothing within the appellant’s background or profile that would give the Khalani tribe reasonable cause for thinking that the appellant had the capability to orchestrate murder and so swiftly, even if the two were involved in a dispute a few hours earlier. Looking at the facts in the round, I find his entire account has a ring of implausibility to it. I find this core element of his account to therefore be implausible and highly implausible at that.
42. Section 8: The appellant accepts that he travelled through several safe European countries before coming to the United Kingdom. He states that he was under the control of an agent and therefore could not claim asylum in any of these other countries. Having had the opportunity to hear from this vulnerable adult, I find that I was not being provided with anywhere near a complete picture as to how he was able to get from the IKR to the United Kingdom via illegal boat crossing. Such an endeavour could only have occurred at great cost and great assistance. I find that there has been a substantial amount of support (including family support) that made possible what is a most remarkable journey from Iraq to the United Kingdom for someone with such vulnerabilities. I find that the appellant has not been candid with the Tribunal about all of the support that was available to him to complete this journey. I do not believe his explanations that the reasons for him not claiming asylum in several safe European countries was because he was under the control of the agent. I find that if he were a genuine asylum seeker and especially one with the particular vulnerabilities that he has, that it would have been easier for both him and any agent assisting him to have claimed asylum in the first safe European country. I find that section 8 is engaged.
43. In my global assessment of credibility, I have taken into account both the documentary evidence submitted (in particular the arrest warrant) and the failure of the respondent to interview the appellant. However, the adverse credibility findings made in respect of the appellant’s testimony materially damage the appellant’s credibility and therefore applying Tanveer Ahmed [2002] UKIAT 00439 little weight is placed on the documentary evidence in support of this part of the claim.
44. In conclusion, I find that this is a manufactured protection claim. As I do not accept the Khalani tribe hold the appellant responsible for the murder of one of their own, it follows that I do not accept the appellant’s account in relation to the authorities visiting his house on a couple of occasions, taking away his CSID and INID cards and issuing him with an arrest warrant. I find against the appellant on this issue of dispute.
7. The judge ultimately dismissed the appeal. Permission was granted to challenge the judge’s assessment set out above. The appellant had advanced other arguments before the FtT, but the judge’s determination of these arguments was either not challenged on appeal to the Upper Tribunal or were refused permission.
Grounds of appeal to the Upper Tribunal
8. I have considered the written grounds of appeal upon which permission has been granted, together with the submissions made by the representatives at the ‘error of law’ hearing. I will refer to those submissions and the written arguments only insofar as it is necessary for me to determine this ‘error of law’ challenge.
9. The appellant challenges the judge’s decision on 4 grounds, but these can be distilled into two principal challenges. Firstly, the grounds contend that the appellant’s account was one that was capable of belief and the judge erred in law by failing to adequately reason his findings and by relying on his subjective belief of how people would act as being determinative of the credibility of the appellant’s claim. Whilst acknowledging that plausibility has a role to play in the overall assessment of the credibility of a person’s account, the authorities identified by the judge caution against findings that are based on plausibility given the inherent dangers in such an approach. The grounds contend that it was unheralded for the judge to have deployed plausibility to reject the appellant’s account in circumstances where that implausibility finding is dependent on the judge’s view of how other people may think or act. The judge’s subjective belief as to how others may act was an insufficient legal basis to support his conclusion. In rejecting the appellant’s account because it was implausible the judge conflated the appellant’s deafness with his perceived incapacity to undertake nefarious activities or undertake his journey to the UK without a ‘substantial amount of support’.
10. Secondly, the grounds contend that the judge essentially ‘pulled the cart before the horse’ by attaching little weight to an arrest warrant document provided by the appellant because he had previously found the appellant to be incredible. This was said to be inconsistent with the authority of Mibanga v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2005] EWCA Civ 367 (Mibanga), where it was held that a fact-finder must not reach their conclusion before surveying all the evidence relevant thereto. The basic principle established by Mibanga was summarised by Sir Ernest Ryder in AM (Afghanistan) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2017] EWCA Civ 1123, when he said at paragraph 19(a) that:-"It is an error of approach to come to a negative assessment of credibility and then ask whether that assessment is displaced by other material". The grounds contend that the judge offered no independent reasoning for rejecting the reliability of the arrest warrant document and he thereby fell into legal error.
Discussion
11. At [39] the judge properly directed himself in respect of the relevant authorities that consider the approach to take when a factfinder is assessing the credibility of an appellant’s account based on plausibility. HK v SSHD [2006] EWCA Civ 1037 and Y v SSHD [2006] EWCA Civ 1223 warn against the danger of an assessment of credibility or reasonable likelihood which is over-influenced by cultural differences and which is then used as the sole basis for rejecting the whole claim. Y reminds us that a judge is not required to take at face value an account of facts proffered by an appellant, no matter how contrary to common sense and experience of human behaviour the account may be (at [26]).
12. In MN v SSHD [202] EWCA Civ 1746 the Court of Appeal stated that:
“… the term "plausibility" is not a term of art. To say that a particular account, or element in that account, is implausible is simply to say that it seems to the decision-maker to be inherently surprising, or the kind of thing that you would not normally expect to happen; and such an assessment will obviously feed into the overall assessment of credibility, though the weight to be given to it will depend on the degree of unlikelihood and how confident the decision-maker can be about it.”
13. The judge in the present appeal remind himself that the fact that an account may seem implausible does not mean that it is not true, and that he should consider the plausibility of the appellant’s account against the appropriate social and cultural background and any relevant country evidence. I note the absence of any submission that the judge’s findings were inconsistent with any specific background evidence or particular social or cultural context appertaining in the IKR.
14. In my judgment the judge provided sufficient reasoning to support his finding that the appellant’s account was implausible. I note first that ‘implausible’ is not the same as impossible. Next, the judge noted not only the appellant’s deafness and the likely concomitant communication difficulties he would encounter in arranging the killing, but also the speed at which any such arrangements would have had to have been made by the appellant. Moreover, the judge was rationally entitled to find that, notwithstanding the argument in the morning, the employer’s family were unlikely to regard a deaf labourer who did not hail from a powerful tribe or family and who had to support his younger disabled brother as having orchestrated the killing.
15. Significantly, the judge did not just rely on his assessment that the appellant’s account was implausible, but also on an adverse inference legitimately drawn under section 8 of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004. The judge rejected the appellant’s explanation for not claiming asylum in several safe countries. The judge was undoubted entitled to find that the appellant was a person who would have required a substantial amount of support to make his journey. The judge’s implausibility finding was not therefore the only reason why the judge rejected the appellant’s credibility.
16. Nor am I persuaded that the judge impermissible placed little weight (not no weight) on the document purporting to be an arrest warrant. The judge clearly indicated at the beginning of paragraph 43 that he assessed the credibility of the appellant’s account ‘globally’, having taken into account the documentary evidence, and in particular the arrest warrant. This materially undermines the appellant’s claim that the judge first rejected the appellant’s credibility before consider evidence relevant thereto. The judge referred to and applied Tanveer Ahmed (Documents unreliable and forged) Pakistan* [2002] UTIAT 00439 (Tanveer Ahmed). The appellant in Tanveer Ahmed claimed to be a member of a Pakistani political party and provided several documents in support of his claim including an arrest warrant which he claimed was genuine. The Tribunal set out a summary of principles at [38]:
1. In asylum and human rights cases it is for an individual claimant to show that a document on which he seeks to rely can be relied on.
2. The decision maker should consider whether a document is one on which reliance should properly be placed after looking at all the evidence in the round.
3. Only very rarely will there be the need to make an allegation of forgery, or evidence strong enough to support it. The allegation should not be made without such evidence. Failure to establish the allegation on the balance of probabilities to the higher civil standard does not show that a document is reliable. The decision maker still needs to apply principles 1 and 2.
17. In my judgment the judge properly applied the Tanveer Ahmed principles. The judge approached the arrest warrant holistically or in the round and concluded, in light of his other findings, that the appellant had not demonstrated that the document was reliable. This was a conclusion rationally open to the judge based on the evidence before him.
18. I find there is no error of law in the judge’s decision.
Notice of Decision
The appeal is dismissed

D. Blum

Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

20 October 2026