United Kingdom Immigration and Asylum (AIT/IAC) Unreported Judgments

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IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER

Case No: UI- 2024-004476   First tier number: PA/63829/2023

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

On 14 ^th of February 2025

 

Before

 

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE BRUCE

DEPUTY UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE HUGHES

 

Between

 

T H

( anonymity direction made)

Appellant

and

 

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT

Respondent

Representation :

 

For the Appellant: Ms R. Evans, Solicitor

For the Respondent: Mr A. McVeety, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

 

Heard at Manchester Civil Justice Centre on 17 January 2025

 

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.

 

'ERROR OF LAW' DECISION AND DIRECTIONS

1.              The Appellant appeals with permission against the decision of First-tier Tribunal Judge C.J. Williams ("the Judge") who, in a decision promulgated on 2 August 2024, dismissed the Appellant's appeal against the Respondent's decision to refuse his protection claim.

2.              The Appellant is a national of Iraq of Kurdish ethnicity, date of birth 25 September 1998. He claimed asylum upon his arrival in the United Kingdom on 15 March 2022. The basis of his claim was the risk he would face on return at the hands of his own or his former partner's family, having dishonoured them by his premarital relationship with that partner; he being a Kurdish Muslim and she being of Kakai faith. The partner's father had powerful connections with PUK and the Appellant had fled Iraq after an armed group came to his home in search of him.

3.              The Appellant's claim was refused on 22 November 2023. The appeal against that decision was heard at the Manchester First-tier Tribunal hearing centre on 19 July 2024, at which the agreed issues were the credibility of the Appellant's claim of his risk upon return, and whether he had, or could obtain, the documentation needed to live in Iraq. The Respondent accepted that if the Appellant's account was credible, the risk faced could not be addressed by sufficient protection for him in the country, or internal relocation. No appeal was pursued on Article 8 grounds.

4.              Dismissing the appeal, the Judge found that the Appellant's account of his relationship with the partner was not credible. In reaching this conclusion the Judge relied upon country background evidence adduced by the Respondent that was said to support the contention that members of the Kakai faith suffered significant persecution and discrimination within the IKR such that it was not credible that:

                          i.             The Appellant and his partner would not have discussed religion prior to seeking to marry (at paragraph 14).

                        ii.             The partner's family, being of the Kakai faith, would have connections with the PUK.

                      iii.             A person of the Kakai faith would hold a position of prominence as claimed in relation to the partner's father.

5.              There are four grounds of appeal, which we summarise as follows:

                          i.             The Judge had misunderstood the country background evidence. Insofar as it relayed persecutory treatment of the Kakai, this related to those residing in government-controlled Iraq, and not the IKR.

                        ii.             The Judge failed to attach any or sufficient weight to such country background evidence that supported the Appellant's account that the Kakai do not face discrimination in the IKR.

                      iii.             The Judge made a mistake of fact in finding there to be no objective evidence corroborating the Appellant's account of the absence of discrimination.

                      iv.             The Judge was wrong to hold against the Appellant the perceived absence of corroboration.

6.              Before us, Ms Evans acknowledged that the four grounds overlapped substantially. The first three grounds amounted to a clear misunderstanding of the country background evidence that was before the Judge, and the fourth ground took the matter little further in the circumstances, as in any event there was corroboration for the Appellant's account.

7.              Mr McVeety invited us to find that the country background evidence was equally applicable to the IKR and government-controlled Iraq, and that the Judge was entitled to make the credibility findings that he did in reliance upon that evidence. Such evidence as there was of the fair treatment of followers of the Kakai faith in the IKR was both limited and ambiguous.

 

Findings on Grounds (i)-(iii)

8.              The Judge's very brief decision makes little more than passing reference to the country background evidence, at paragraph 14, as follows: "The objective evidence relied upon by the Respondent (pp. 325-334, SB [Stitched Bundle]) refers to followers of the Kakai faith experiencing persecution and marginalisation." The Judge's findings of fact were predicated upon the seemingly unquestioned acceptance of that evidence, and that it was of relevance to followers of the Kakai faith in IKR. We are satisfied that was a misreading of the background evidence, which was focused upon mistreatment of followers residing in government-controlled Iraq and which did not support a finding that those residing in the IKR faced such discrimination. Furthermore, we observe that the Judge did not appear to consider the evidence of positive engagement and relations between the authorities and followers of the Kakai faith in the IKR ("Top Kurdistan officials honour Kakai religious observance" Kurdistan.24.net article 17 January 2022), and that the need to protect followers was taken seriously by the authorities in the IKR ("Under Fire: the unknown attacks on the Kakai " Bloomberg BNN article 19 September 2023).

9.              We have concluded that in his assessment of the credibility of the Appellant, the Judge contextualised his key findings of fact in background evidence that was at best equivocal, and that had in any event been misunderstood. Those findings went to the heart of the Appellant's case, and we are satisfied that the Judge's approach therefore both took irrelevant considerations into account and failed to consider material evidence. Those errors of law further infected the short consideration of the Appellant's ability to obtain documentation for his return to Iraq.

10.          It follows that we find grounds (i), (ii) and (iii) made out.

Ground (iv)

11.          We need to say very little about ground (iv), which covers the same factual territory, albeit from a different legal direction. It is trite law that there is no requirement to produce corroborative evidence in support of an asylum claim, and the Judge's assessment of the Appellant's credibility by inference fell foul of this, at paragraph 15, when he set out "The Appellant claims in his witness statement (p/158 SB) that there is 'no discrimination towards Kakais in Kurdistan', there is no objective evidence on this point he has provided." However, this ground clearly overlaps with ground (iii), the failure to consider the country background evidence that arguably did provide corroboration.

Decision and Directions

12.          The decision of the First-tier Tribunal is set aside for the reasons set out above with no findings preserved.

13.          The remaking of the decision in the appeal is remitted to the First-tier Tribunal at Manchester, to be remade by any Judge other than Judge C J Williams.

 

Leighton Hughes

 

Deputy Upper Tribunal Judge Hughes

Immigration and Asylum Chamber

4 February 2025