Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER Case No: UI-2026-003339
First-tier Tribunal No: PA/61266/2023

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:
On 9 October 2026

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE O’CALLAGHAN
DEPUTY UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE PAUL LEWIS

Between

AR
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and
SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:

For the Appellant: Mr. Caswell, counsel, instructed by direct access
For the Respondent: Ms. Newton, Senior Presenting Officer

Heard at Manchester Civil Justice Centre on 6 October 2026

DECISION AND REASONS

Order Regarding Anonymity

Anonymity was ordered by the First-tier Tribunal No application to discharge was made. It remains in force in the terms below because the issues raised in this protection appeal and the appellant’s article 8 ECHR rights outweigh the principle of open justice.

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.

Background
1. The appellant is a national of Iraq of Kurdish ethnicity. On 11th November 2021 he claimed asylum based on his fear of his ex-employer.
2. At the core of his account the appellant claimed to be a ‘Kolber’ employed to smuggle goods across the Iranian border. He worked for two men, both of whom had the same first name. The appellant described the work as dangerous, carrying the risk of capture and potential summary execution by the Iranian authorities.
3. On one occasion, the appellant claimed to have had goods of significant value confiscated at the Iranian border. He managed to escape detention, however the appellant said that his employer demanded to be compensated for the loss of his goods and threatened the appellant with death if he did not make good the losses.
4. The appellant claimed that his employer was a high ranking official within the Peshmerga who had the status and reach to identify and harm the appellant with impunity.
5. His claim was refused by the respondent in a decision dated 13th October 2023. Although the respondent accepted the appellant was a Kolber, she did not accept the appellant was at risk from his employer, or that such risk engaged the protection conferred by Article 1A (2) of the Refugee Convention 1951.
6. The appellant appealed to the First-tier Tribunal Judge [‘the judge’] on humanitarian protection grounds only. His appeal was refused in a decision promulgated on 4th March 2026.
7. Permission to appeal against the judge’s decision was granted by First-tier Tribunal Judge Turner on a single ground:
The judge failed to ‘deal’ with the independent news reports supporting the appellant’s case that his employer holds a senior position in the Peshmerga Ministry.

The hearing
8. The appellant was represented by a solicitor at the hearing before the Judge. For the purposes of his onward appeal the appellant represented himself, crafting with notable care and precision the grounds of appeal.
9. Mr. Caswell, counsel, appeared before us having accepted instructions directly from the appellant the previous evening. We took care to ensure that Mr. Caswell had all the documents in this appeal. He was provided with an electronic copy of the bundle and the respondent’s Rule 24 response.
10. We proceeded with the hearing only after Mr. Caswell confirmed he had sufficient time to consider the material. We read and heard the parties helpful submissions and reserved our decision.
11. The making of the decision of the First-tier Tribunal did not involve the making of a material error on a point of law for the reasons we now set out.

Discussion
12. The core of the appellant’s account was that he was employed by a person with significant power and influence. At the hearing before the judge the appellant relied upon a screenshot of a profile page from Facebook which the appellant said identified his employer.
13. At [23], the judge noted that the individual identified on that profile had 79 ‘followers’ on Facebook and that the posts made on the profile had been ‘liked’ 53 times. The judge found that the modest number of interactions with the profile was not consistent with a person holding a significant political post as the appellant alleged.
14. In support of his appeal before the judge the appellant relied on a county schedule [the ‘Schedule’]. Within the Schedule, at items (3), (4) and (5), were three references to newspaper articles said to identify a person with the same name as the holder of the Facebook profile holding a senior role in the Peshmerga.
15. It is important to state with care precisely what material was before the judge. Although the Schedule provided hyperlinks to three newspaper articles (two of which worked and the other did not), the appellant’s former representative chose to extract and reproduce a short paragraph from each news article which all name the individual and his role in the Peshmerga.
16. Whilst two of the hyperlinks direct the reader to newspaper articles with photographs of the named individual, the parties agreed that the judge was not directed to the articles themselves. At the hearing the hyperlinks served only as evidence of the source material rather than an invitation to the judge to explore the remainder of the article and draw conclusions from it.
17. On our enquiry Mr. Caswell conceded that at [25] the judge referred to all the material in the case. Nonetheless, Mr. Caswell submitted that judge failed to properly consider or reconcile these extracts which were highly supportive of the appellant’s case and that such failure amounts to a material error of law.
18. For the respondent, Ms. Newton submits that it is trite law that a judge need not address every document. She relies on Budhathoki (reasons for decisions) [2014] UKUT 0341 (IAC). The same principle was stated in Volpi v Volpi [2022] EWCA Civ 464 at [2]. Mr. Caswell did not contest it.
19. Although the judge chose not refer to the articles directly; the failure to do so does not, by itself, render the decision as insufficiently reasoned. We recognise, however, that the extracts went to a central issue in the appeal, and that a failure to engage with evidence of that kind may, in some cases, amount to an error of law. Such assessment will be depend on the issues arising in each case.
20. Two matters arise: First, Mr Caswell conceded that there was no error in the judge's finding that the paucity of social media engagement was inconsistent with the profile of a well-known figure. That concession exposes a difficulty in the appellant's evidence that he never sought to explain. The Facebook profile was the only evidence linking his employer to the individual named in the extracts. Either the profile was that of his employer, in which case it did not support the claim that his employer was a person of influence, or it was not, in which case nothing connected his employer to the individual named in the extracts. Had the judge expressly considered the extracts, she could not have bridged that gap in the appellant’s evidence.
21. Second, the judge's rejection of the appellant's account did not rest on the issue of his employer's seniority alone. In a detailed decision, the judge identified other significant inconsistencies in the appellant's account, and at [22] she found a core aspect of that account implausible. None of those findings is challenged. They provided an independent and sufficient basis for rejecting the claim, and we are satisfied that, had the judge expressly engaged with the extracts, the outcome would inevitably have been the same.
22. The judge gave adequate reasons for rejecting the appellant's account. Any failure to refer expressly to the extracts in the Schedule was not material to the outcome. The decision of the First-tier Tribunal does not involve the making of a material error on a point of law.

Notice of Decision
The decision of the Judge does not contain an error of law. The appeal is dismissed.

Paul Lewis

Deputy Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber
7th October 2026