Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER Case No: UI-2026-003121
First-tier Tribunal No: PA/62898/2023
LP/03370/2025

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

On 9th of October 2026

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE BLUNDELL

Between

MA
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr Gaffar, Solicitor, Londonium Solicitors
For the Respondent: Ms Ahmed, Senior Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 21 August 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
1. Anonymity was ordered by the First-tier Tribunal and that order shall remain in force because the appellant is an asylum seeker and the need for his protection outweighs the presumption in favour of open justice.
2. The appellant appeals with the permission of Upper Tribunal Judge Hoffman against the decision of First-tier Tribunal Judge Cohen (“the judge”). By his decision dated 3 March 2026, the judge dismissed the appellant’s appeal against the respondent’s refusal of his claim for international protection.
3. The appellant is an Iraqi national of Kurdish ethnicity who was born on 4 March 1993. He arrived in the United Kingdom unlawfully on 1 June 2021 and claimed asylum that day. The appellant claimed to be at risk from the family members of a young woman (“Y”) with whom he had enjoyed a clandestine relationship. The Secretary of State refused the claim for asylum. She did not believe the appellant’s account but she also concluded that the appellant could relocate safely and reasonably so as to avoid any such threat.
4. The appellant was represented by a legal representative named Mr Choudhury before the judge on 12 February 2026. The respondent was represented by a Presenting Officer named Ms Larkai. The judge heard oral evidence from the appellant and submissions from the representatives before reserving his decision.
5. In his reserved decision, the judge found the appellant’s account of his relationship with Y to be untrue, for reasons that he gave at [35]-[39], [41]-[42], [46]-[49] and [51]-[52]. He did not accept that Y’s family held any influence in Iraq for reasons he gave at [40]. The judge found, at [43] and [57]-[58], that the appellant could obtain a replacement travel document from the Iraqi Embassy in London because he was in contact with his family in Iraq and could obtain his CSID card and passport from them. He would not need to relocate internally because he could safely return to his family home: [61]. The appeal was therefore dismissed on protection grounds. I need not make reference to the remaining parts of the judge’s decision, since those aspects are not the subject of this appeal.
6. The appellant’s initial application for permission to appeal was refused by First-tier Tribunal Judge Elliott. On renewal to the Upper Tribunal, it was contended that the judge had made irrational and speculative contrary speculative credibility findings, many of which were based on the judge’s assumptions about the way in which people would behave. It was submitted, secondly, that the judge had given legally insufficient reasons for concluded that the medical and Red Cross documents adduced by the appellant were of “little evidential value”. The third ground of appeal was that the judge had misapplied the country guidance in SMO & KSP [2022] UKUT 110 (IAC) in considering whether the appellant would have access to civil status identity documentation. The final ground was that the judge had misapplied section 8 of the Immigration (Treatment of Claimants etc) Act 2004 (“the 2004 Act”).
7. UTJ Hoffman was persuaded to grant permission because it was arguable that the judge had relied upon “his own subjective assumptions” to reject the appellant’s account and because it was not clear that the appellant’s failure to claim asylum en route to the UK had been put to him at the hearing.
8. On 9 July 2026, the Secretary of State filed a response to the grounds under rule 24 of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008. She submitted that the appeal should be dismissed because the judge’s credibility findings had been properly open to him.
9. At the start of the hearing, I noted that the fourth ground raised a challenge to the procedural fairness of the judge’s analysis under section 8, in that it was contended at paragraph 7.21 of the grounds of appeal that the appellant had not been asked why he had failed to claim asylum en route to the UK. I noted that Judge Hoffman had ordered that the recording of the proceedings before the FtT should be obtained, and that I had received that recording. I offered the representatives the chance to listen to that recording, and in particular to the clear recording of the appellant’s oral evidence. Both representatives wished to listen to the recording of the appellant’s cross-examination, and I allowed them to do so in the hearing room. I should note that the penultimate question in cross-examination was:
“You claim to have travelled through Turkey, Greece, Bosnia and France. You weren’t prevented from claiming asylum in any of these countries, were you?”
10. The appellant’s answer was:
“Personally, no. When we were in Greece, I was separated from my girlfriend by the agent – the owner of the agent - and I was under control of the agent. At the point that we were arrested by the police, we were separated. The agent said “your beloved girlfriend, we have taken her to a place where we aim to get you reunited together, in a safe country. While we were under control of the agent all the time, I was not able to disobey them at any point.”
11. Both advocates confirmed, having listened to the recording, that they were ready to proceed. I then heard detailed submissions from Mr Gaffar and Ms Ahmed, the substance of which I will consider in my analysis of the grounds of appeal.
Analysis
12. Before I consider the individual grounds of appeal, I recall that the appellant’s challenge is to findings of fact made by a judge who considered the evidence as a whole and who heard the appellant give oral evidence. In those circumstances, the superior courts have made it clear on many recent occasions that appellate courts should be slow to interfere with such judgments. I will not set out, but have in mind, the helpful guidance given by Lewison LJ in Volpi v Volpi [2022] EWCA Civ 464; [2022] 4 WLR 48.
Ground One
13. By his first ground, Mr Gaffar contends that the judge’s credibility findings were vitiated by legal error. The grounds of appeal took issue with the findings at [35], [36], [38] and [42]. In his oral submissions, Mr Gaffar sought permission to make further challenges to the findings expressed at [39], [40], [41], [43], [47], [59] and [61]. Ms Ahmed opposed that application, submitting that she had been given no notice of it and no indication of the way in which the challenges were to be made. She said that Mr Gaffar was making up grounds of appeal “as he went along”.
14. I refused Mr Gaffar permission to broaden this ground of appeal. As Ms Ahmed noted, there had been no written notice of his intention to do so, and there was nothing which gave the Secretary of State any indication of the way in which the various challenges were to be expressed. It is important that procedural rigour is observed in such matters. The appellant advanced grounds of appeal which were rejected by the FtT. Those grounds were refined and permission was granted by the Upper Tribunal on 26 June 2026. The respondent considered those grounds and filed a response under rule 24. It is not in accordance with the interests of justice for a party to seek to amend their grounds of appeal orally, whilst their advocate is making their opening submissions.
15. I therefore confined Mr Gaffar’s submissions to the points advanced in the grounds of appeal, and will return to those arguments. The findings challenged in ground one were, in summary, as follows.
16. At [35], the judge considered it unlikely that the appellant would have met his girlfriend in public places if they intended to keep their relationship secret. That finding was said to have been reached without reference to the appellant’s statement, in which he said that meeting in a public place was actually less risky than meeting in private, where discovery would be more compromising.
17. At [36], the judge considered it to be implausible that Y’s brothers had been able to find the appellant and Y in a remote mountainous location because they had not been followed. That finding was said to be in error because the evidence was that the brothers had seen them together and had given chase. The judge was said to have reversed the burden of proof and required the appellant to prove a negative.
18. At [37]-[38], the judge stated that the appellant had given three different accounts of the brothers’ arrival at the scene. Either he had seen them approaching in another car; or he saw them when they were about to get out of the car; or he saw them when they had left the car and he could see at that stage that they were carrying weapons. This finding was said to be in error because the appellant was said to have given consistent evidence that the brothers were armed.
19. At [42], the judge had found that it was “totally implausible” that the appellant’s uncle would have told him not to contact his family, and equally unlikely that the appellant would comply. The judge was said to have failed to consider evidence of people smugglers telling their clients to sever contact with their families.
20. In sum, the judge was said in ground one to have applied the wrong standard of proof in rejecting the appellant’s account.
21. I do not consider these criticisms to be well made. As Ms Ahmed submitted, the appellant seeks in substance to disagree with the findings made by the trial judge, and fails to identify any real legal error in his decision. Applying the principle of appellate restraint which I have already mentioned, I do not consider there to be any proper basis to interfere with the judge’s findings.
22. The judge heard the appellant give evidence about the events which were said to have precipitated his flight from Iraq. The judge was entitled to be surprised by the claim that the appellant and Y decided to meet in public in order to keep their relationship secret. Another judge might have accepted what the appellant said in this regard, but that is not the test. The judge was entitled to assess the plausibility of the account before him, and was not required to accept it if he considered that it was contrary to common sense and experience of human behaviour: Y v SSHD [2006] EWCA Civ 1223, at [26]. The judge was entitled, therefore, to consider it implausible that the appellant and Y would choose to conduct their clandestine relationship in public when her father was said to be a senior official in the regional government and associated with Mahmoud Sangawi, the head of the Garmian region.
23. The judge heard the appellant give evidence about the ability of Y’s brothers to locate them in a remote mountainous region. The appellant did not suggest in his oral evidence (to which I have listened) that he and Y were followed there by the brothers, and this was rationally a point which concerned the judge. The judge was entitled to hold that this aspect of the appellant’s account was implausible. To do so was permissible as a matter of law and was in accordance with the guidance given in the leading authorities, as summarised by Keene LJ in Y v SSHD.
24. The judge also listened to the appellant’s evidence about the events which supposedly followed the brothers’ discovery of he and Y at the remote location. He noted that the appellant had given one version of events at question 92 of his interview, only to change that account twice during his oral evidence. This is, with respect to Mr Gaffar, precisely the sort of finding with which an appellate tribunal must be hesitant to interfere. The judge heard the appellant give one version of events and then change it when he was confronted with a difficulty (as to how he could see that the brothers were armed) and the judge was best placed to consider whether the appellant’s account was untrue. Mr Gaffar submitted that the finding went “beyond the evidence”. I do not accept that rather vague criticism, and I do not consider there to be any legal error in this paragraph of his decision.
25. Nor do I accept that the judge fell into error in finding at [42] that the appellant’s uncle would not have advised him not to contact his family when he arrived in the United Kingdom. The judge explained the reasons for that – he said that the family would want to know that the appellant was safe, and he could not accept that the uncle would have tendered such advice. This finding is said to have been contrary to the evidence, but Mr Gaffar was not able to point to any evidence which supported the contention in the grounds of appeal that this practice is commonly encountered. I have considered hundreds of asylum claims brought by Iraqi nationals, many of whom have stated that they have remained in contact with their families. The judge’s finding was rooted in the common sense of which Keene LJ spoke in Y v SSHD and was properly open to him.
26. In sum, I conclude that the criticisms made of the judge’s credibility findings in the grounds of appeal are not made out. I agree with Ms Ahmed that they amount to mere disagreement with the analysis of the judge who heard the appellant give evidence before him. He was entitled to find that the appellant’s account was contradictory, implausible, vague and unsubstantiated for the reasons that he gave. His conclusion that the appellant had fabricated his account in its entirety was open to him, and this ground of appeal is not made out.
Ground Two
27. By this ground, the appellant contends that the judge failed to give legally adequate reasons for reaching various conclusions. It is said that the judge failed to consider evidence about the appellant’s mental health and failed to engage adequately or at all with evidence from the Red Cross.
28. Mr Gaffar opted to say very little about this ground of appeal in his oral submissions, and wisely so. The judge’s decision speaks for itself in its consideration of this evidence, and I do not consider this to be one of those cases in which any allowance needs to be made for the “penumbra of imprecision” with which such findings are expressed (Biogen Inc v Medeva Ltd [1996] UKHL 18 refers.
29. The judge was presented with Red Cross Tracing Requests which were completed by the appellant in 2021 and 2022. The first was completed in France, the second in the UK. The appellant sought to trace Y. Amongst other details, he gave her details, including her full name, age and place of birth. He stated that he had last seen her in a “Camp quarantaine en Crete (Grece).” He said that they had then become separated, after which he was in Athens for four or five months before leaving the country. It was the appellant’s case, as I understand it, that the Red Cross had drawn a blank in any enquiries which then ensued.
30. The judge attached little weight to this evidence, finding that the Red Cross could only “act upon information provided by the appellant” and that he had not provided detailed addresses or phone numbers”. Both observations were correct, and it is not clear in any event how this evidence was thought to be of assistance to the appellant. If Y had been discovered in Crete, or elsewhere, she might have been able to provide evidence supporting the appellant’s account. But the fact that the appellant had asked for enquiries to be made about her whereabouts established nothing more than that; the appellant had asked an international agency to find a person who was said to be his partner, and they had not found any such person. It was open to the judge to conclude that this evidence “does not advance the appellant’s claim in any manner”, as he did at [44].
31. The judge gave the medical evidence, such as it was, equally short shrift. The medical evidence consisted of photographs of tablet boxes which did not bear the name of the patient; a GP record which showed that the appellant had been diagnosed with anxiety in 2025 and had been prescribed Escitalopram in March that year; and a letter from a Clinical Psychologist named Dr Demir, which stated that the appellant had engaged in a support group from July 2022 to April 2025, when the group ended.
32. The judge took account of this evidence, noting at [45], that the appellant had engaged in group therapy and was on a “starter dose of antidepressant medication”. He did not find this evidence to advance the appellant’s claim because it was common for asylum seekers to experience mental health problems. That finding was properly open to the judge on the evidence which was adduced before him; there was nothing to show, for example, that the appellant’s mental health problems stemmed from the events he described in Iraq. The medical evidence provided no real support for the appellant’s narrative, and the judge was correct so to conclude. No further reasons were necessary. The appellant can understand the basis upon which the judge attached little weight to this evidence, as a result of which his reasons pass the litmus test set out at [13]-[16] of R (Iran) & Ors v SSHD [2005] Imm AR 535 and [36] of South Bucks District Council v Porter [2004] UKHL 33; [2004] 1 WLR 1953.
33. The judge was entitled to conclude at [46] that the appellant had “failed to provide any substantive evidence whatsoever” to support his claim. The grounds of appeal protest that the judge failed, in making that observation, to consider the medical evidence, the Red Cross evidence and other material. But to make that submission is to baulk at the observation without considering the decision as a whole. When considered as a whole, it is quite clear that the judge considered all of the evidence before him and that the observation did not mean that there was no evidence, but instead that the evidence which had been adduced did not, in truth, add anything of substance to the appellant’s assertions.
34. Ground two is not made out.
Ground Three
35. It is contended in this ground that the judge misapplied the country guidance in SMO & KSP. Before I come to the substance of that complaint, I should probably mention that the Upper Tribunal gave subsequent country guidance in AH & Ors (Identity documentation; returns to KRI) Iraq CG [2026] UKUT 150 (IAC) but that country guidance was agreed by the parties to be flawed for reasons which I need not spell out, and the decision was set aside and remitted to the Upper Tribunal by a consent order which was sealed by Master Bancroft-Rimmer on 28 July 2026. At all material times, therefore, the relevant country guidance has been “SMO II”, as it has come to be known.
36. The appellant’s evidence before the judge was that his Civil Status Identity Document (“CSID”) remained in the family home in Iraq. The judge accepted, following SMO II, that the appellant would be at risk of difficulty if he did not have a CSID or an INID but he concluded that his family could take his CSID to him so that he could use it until he obtained an INID: [57]. The judge concluded that the appellant could obtain a new INID in Iraq, after being taken to the relevant civil status office by his family using his CSID: [59]. In terms of travel to Iraq, the judge held at [58] that the appellant could return to Iraq on either a laissez passer (“LP”) or a replacement document from the Iraqi Embassy in London. The judge did not accept that any of this would entail a breach of Article 3 ECHR.
37. The first point in ground three is that the judge was not entitled to find that the appellant was not in contact with his family in Iraq. I confess that I do not understand that point. The judge rejected the entirety of the appellant’s claim, including his assertion that he had not been in contact with his family in Iraq on the advice of his uncle. That evidence having been rejected, it was obviously open to the judge to conclude that the appellant was, in fact, in contact with his family in Iraq. That was the finding he made at [57].
38. The second point made in this ground is that the judge reached his finding that the appellant could obtain an LP or a replacement travel document from the Iraqi Embassy without considering the appellant’s evidence that he had asked the Embassy for a replacement degree certificate. That assertion is flatly wrong; the judge considered that very point at [43].
39. The third point concerns the difficulties which an Iraqi might encounter in securing an LP from the Iraqi Embassy. As was explained in SMO II and previous country guidance decisions, however, such difficulties are not relevant to the grounds of appeal available to an appellant in a statutory appeal such as this. The point concerns the feasibility of return, and not the risk to the person once they have been returned. In that respect, the availability of documents for international travel, such as a passport or LP, is to be distinguished from the availability of documents for internal travel and subsistence, such as the CSID and INID.
40. It is then said that the judge failed to consider whether the appellant would face risk as a Kurd travelling from Baghdad to his home area in Sulaymaniyah. But there is nothing in SMO II which suggests that the appellant would be at risk on that journey as a Kurd who was of no interest to the authorities and who was in possession of a valid identity document. In common with Judge Elliott, who refused permission to appeal at first instance, Ms Ahmed considered that no such difficulty would arise because the CPIN made clear that removal could be to an airport in the IKR. I agree with the grounds of appeal and Mr Gaffar that the judge made no finding in that respect, but that does not assist the appellant. Even assuming that return would be to Baghdad, there is simply no reason to think that this particular appellant would be at risk en route to his home area.
Ground Four
41. By this ground, it is contended that the judge erred in his application of section 8 of the 2004 Act. The judge’s conclusion in that respect is at [51]:
The appellant came to the UK having passed through countries including Greece and France. He did not seek political asylum in either of those safe countries prior to coming to the UK. I find the appellant’s actions to be contrary to those of a genuine asylum seeker in fear of their life having regard to Section 8 of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants) Act 2004, and I find that the appellant’s actions detract substantially from his credibility.
42. That finding is said to be flawed in two ways. The first, as advanced in the grounds, is that the judge’s decision was vitiated by procedural impropriety because he “did not ask why the appellant failed to claim asylum in those countries”. There is nothing in that challenge, as it is quite clear that the Presenting Officer asked the appellant during cross-examination about his failure to claim asylum en route to the UK: my [9] and [10] above refer.
43. The second aspect of this ground is that the judge did not consider the appellant’s explanation during cross-examination, which was that he was under the control of the agent at all stages. It is certainly correct to assert that there is no mention of that explanation in [51] of the judge’s decision. But I do not consider that to be a material omission, for two reasons.
44. Firstly, the judge had by stage rejected all that was said by the appellant and must be taken, therefore, to have rejected what the appellant said about his will being overborne by the agent during the entirety of the journey from Iraq to the UK. Secondly, the observations made at [51] of the judge’s decision were not material to his overall credibility finding. He had already rejected the appellant’s account of events in Iraq for the reasons he gave at [35]-[49]. He had found at [49] that the appellant’s entire account was a fabrication and it would not have made any difference to that finding if the judge had accepted what the appellant said about his inability to claim asylum in any of the European countries he travelled through to reach the United Kingdom.
45. I therefore find that the fourth ground is not made out.
Conclusion
46. I do not find there to be any merit in the appellant’s grounds of appeal as developed in Mr Gaffar’s oral submissions. The decision of the First-tier Tribunal shall therefore stand.

Notice of Decision
The decision of the First-tier Tribunal did not involve the making of an error on a point of law and the appellant’s appeal is therefore dismissed.

Mark Blundell

Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

7 October 2026