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

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IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER	Case No: UI-2024-004870
	First-tier Tribunal Nos: PA/60169/2023 LP/04968/2024

 

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

 

19 ^th February 2025

 

Before

 

DEPUTY UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE SAINI

 

Between

 

FH

(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)

Appellant

and

 

The Secretary of State for the Home Department

Respondent

Representation :

For the Appellant: Mr A Coyte, Legal Representative; Fountain Solicitors

For the Respondent: Ms S Rushforth, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

 

Heard at Field House on 7 February 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.

 

DECISION AND REASONS

 

1.               The Appellant appeals against the decision of First-tier Tribunal Judge C J Williams, promulgated on 14 ^th August 2024 dismissing his appeal against the refusal of his protection claim.

2.               The Appellant applied for permission to appeal, which was granted by First-tier Tribunal Judge Turner in the following terms:

"1. The application is in time.

2. The grounds assert that the Judge erred in misdirecting themselves in the credibility assessment of the Appellant. It is argued that IJ Williams failed to consider the personal characteristics of T when assessing the credibility of the Appellant's account of T approaching him and proposing to him despite the claimed ID of her husband and his power and influence. The Appellant relies on objective evidence which it is argued was not considered when assessing this aspect of the claim. I find this point arguable, noting also IJ Williams' accepted point that not all females will confirm to the norm. It is also agreed principle that if people did not act in the manner claimed then there would be no need for the CPIN in honour based violence. Ground one is arguable.

3. The Appellant also argues that IJ Williams considered section 8 of the 2004 Act when assessing credibility despite the Appellant not being given the opportunity to give an explanation for his behaviour during his application process. Despite the Appellant setting out the reasons for his failure to claim in safe countries in his witness statement, it is arguable that the Respondent had no basis for raising a section 8 point in the decision letter and as such this should not have been a factor considered further in the appeal. Regardless, IJ Williams appears to have ignored the Appellant's explanation set out in his witness statement."

3.               The Secretary of State did not provide a Rule 24 response but indicated that the appeal was resisted.

4.               Before the hearing commenced, I asked Mr Coyte to provide me with copies of the policies referred to in his Grounds of Appeal to ensure I had the correct versions of each. The policies that were provided and were before me are Asylum Policy Instruction: Sexual orientation in asylum claims, version 6.0 published 3 ^rd August 2016, asylum interviews version 8.0 published 3 ^rd June 2021, Asylum Policy Instruction: Assessing credibility and refugee status version 9.0 published 6 ^th January 2015, Assessing credibility and refugee status in asylum claims lodged before 28 June 2022, version 10.0 published 28 ^th June 2022 and finally, Country Policy and Information Note (CPIN) Iraq: blood feuds, honour crimes and tribal violence version 1.0 published July 2024.

Findings

5.               At the close of the hearing, I reserved my decision, which I shall now give. I do not find that there is an error of law in the decision such that it should be set aside. My reasons for so finding are as follows.

6.               In respect of the first ground, the complaint is in essence that the Tribunal erred in respect of its assessment of the Appellant's credibility by failing to take into account policies published by the Secretary of State, and which was inconsistent with binding authority from the Court of Appeal in the form of Y v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2006] EWCA Civ 1223. The first complaint is that at paragraphs 12 to 15, although the judge specifically accepts at paragraph 14 that "not every woman in Iraq will necessarily conform to societal expectations" and notes that societal attitudes towards women are "particularly prevalent within uneducated, rural and tribal populations" the judge failed to consider that the Appellant was being pursued by a teacher (referred to hereafter as T) who was an educated woman and who met the Appellant and proposed to him in a coffee shop located in the centre of Duhok city, rather than a rural area. However, Mr Coyte does not point to any suggestion that the judge was unaware of the factual matrix that stood before him that T was a teacher and that the coffee shop was in an urban area when making these findings. Thus, despite the admirable, technical nuance of Mr Coyte's arguments, I find that the complaint is, in truth, one of disagreement. This must follow as the judge has explicitly acknowledged the relevant passage from the CPIN (which was the only one of the five policies Mr Coyte referred to in his grounds that was actually before the judge) and as the judge expressly acknowledged that not every woman in Iraq would behave in the same way as to conform to societal expectations, before he went on to make his finding that he nonetheless found it very difficult to accept that a woman in a patriarchal society such as Iraq would propose to a former student in a coffee shop, particularly when their husband was a powerful individual. I also bear in mind that the societal attitude that is referred to in the grounds and the judge's decision at paragraph 13 merely states that those patriarchal attitudes are "particularly prevalent" within rural areas; and it does not necessarily follow that merely because the coffee shop was located in a city, the attitudes in that city would unequivocally be progressive merely because it was an urban setting, as opposed to a rural one.

7.               Turning to paragraph 1.3 of the grounds, the next complaint is that the judge should not have expected the Appellant to explain why T would risk meeting and proposing to him in a public place. At paragraph 14 of the decision, the judge states he "found it difficult" to accept that, with everything known about the issue of honour in Iraq, and with T being married to an abusive, controlling and influential man, she would have put herself or the Appellant at risk by proposing marriage to someone she had met only once out of school in a public place especially when her feelings were unrequited by the Appellant throughout. There is no mention of the Appellant failing to explain why T did this. The judge is merely expressing their difficulty in accepting the factual account based upon other facts within the claim. Thus, the grounds are misguided in arguing that the Appellant was 'expected' to give an explanation as it was open to the judge to express that it was very difficult for him to accept this was a credible action against the CPIN and objective evidence, which the judge was mindful of and clearly took into account.

8.               Turning to the next complaint at paragraph 1.4 that the judge was not entitled to find as he did at paragraphs 16 to 18, namely, that there was no explanation as to why three years later, the Appellant would then be asked about what he was doing with T in the messages he received nor that there was no actual harm that came to him for four years after receiving these messages; again, I find that this argument is misconceived. The judge has not stated he expected the Appellant to answer questions as to what was in another person's mind. With respect, the grounds misconstrue the judge's findings as, at paragraphs 16 to 18, the judge is merely noting the Appellant's claim to have received messages despite changing his number before finding that there is no explanation why, three years later, the Appellant would then be asked about what he was doing with T and as to why the messages started at that stage three years after the event they complain of. Whilst the Appellant may not be able to give an explanation as to the gap in between his interactions with T and the messages received three years later (which refer to a woman, rather than to T by name), it was plainly open to the judge to find that this is a matter which was vague and confusing and therefore could potentially undermine the credibility of the Appellant's account. That does not mean that the Appellant needed to give an explanation. It is for that reason that the policies, albeit not before the judge but diligently referenced by Mr Coyte in his arguments, cannot assist in demonstrating a material error of law in the judge's decision because Mr Coyte has been unable to point to anywhere in the decision where the judge has criticised the Appellant for not knowing matters which were in another person's mind and which he could not have known about. In terms of the Appellant managing to remain in Iraq for four years "unharmed" after receiving these threatening messages, whilst I note Mr Coyte's submission that he came to some "harm', in that he needed to leave his job and relocate to the farm where his father lived, which interrupted his life, and whilst non-physical harm can still constitute harm as Mr Coyte rightly points to in respect of Article 9 of the Qualification Directive, paragraph 1.5 of the grounds appears to take paragraph 18 of Judge Williams' decision somewhat literally in its statement that no harm came to the Appellant. The judge's implicit finding is surely that no physical harm came to the Appellant, and I do not find that the judge is nullifying nor denying the disruption (the term I would prefer) to the Appellant in leaving his job and relocating to his father's farm. For example, Mr Coyte did not suggest that the need to relocate to the rural area, by itself, was sufficient to demonstrate that there was a well-founded fear of persecution (notwithstanding that the assessment of the Appellant's claim had in any event been found not credible and despite that the judge's assessment had not reached the stage of assessing internal relocation, which the Appellant may have faced difficulty in overcoming given the years spent without harm on his father's farm and his speculation as to the identity of the persons were following him). Thus I do not find that there is any error of law established by ground 1.

9.               Turning to ground 2, My Coyte accepted that on its own, unless an error of law was established in ground 1, ground 2 concerning section 8 matters would be insufficient to demonstrate a material error of law. Nonetheless, I shall briefly consider this ground, de bene esse. In respect of ground 2, in essence, Mr Coyte argued in his grounds that the Secretary of State had failed to put to the Appellant why he did not claim asylum in Greece, Italy, Austria and France en route to the United Kingdom. However, Ms Rushforth pointed to the Appellant's second asylum interview wherein, at AIR 56, the Appellant was asked why he did not claim asylum in any of these countries and was given the opportunity to answer the question and duly answered it. Therefore, the grounds appear to contain an inadvertent factual inaccuracy in suggesting that the Appellant was not given the opportunity to answer why he did not claim asylum in those countries, whereas he was. I observe that the grounds are correct in noting that the judge, when making his own findings on Section 8 in his decision at paragraph 19, did not note the Respondent's response as to why he did not claim asylum in those intervening countries. The reason given that the Appellant did not claim asylum in those countries is said to be because he feared T's family influence extended that far. Given that the judge had found the Appellant's claim not credible, I find that, even if the judge had considered the subjective fear that the Appellant held of T's family somehow having influence in Europe, this would not have resulted in a different outcome to the Appellant's appeal given that the judge had already rejected his account as I have found he was entitled to do. In any event, given that section 8 considerations arise at the end, rather than the beginning, of a Tribunal's credibility assessment, this challenge would not have undermined the judge's credibility assessment in any event.

10.           Thus, I do not find that there is any error of law established in respect of ground 2 either.

11.           In light of the above findings, I do not find that there is any merit in Grounds 1 or 2 such that the decision of the First-tier Tribunal should be set aside.

Notice of Decision

12.           The decision of the First-tier Tribunal shall stand.

13.           The appeal to the Upper Tribunal is dismissed.

 

 

P. Saini 

 

Deputy Judge of the Upper Tribunal

Immigration and Asylum Chamber

 

 

14 February 2025