Upper Tribunal (Immigration and asylum chamber), 2024-07-25, UI-2024-002062

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2024-002062
First-tier Tribunal Nos: PA/51206/2023
LP/01335/2024

Extempore decision


THE IMMIGRATION ACTS


Decision & Reasons Issued:
On the 25 July 2024


Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE STEPHEN SMITH


Between

HC (Iran)
(ANONYMITY ORDER IN FORCE)
Appellant
and

THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Ms F Faran, Counsel, instructed by Middlesex Law Chambers
For the Respondent: Ms S McKenzie, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer


Heard at Field House on 3 July 2024

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. By a decision dated 29 March 2024 First-tier Tribunal Judge Sangha (“the judge”) dismissed an appeal brought by the appellant, a citizen of Iran, against a decision of the Secretary of State dated 15 February 2023 to refuse his asylum and human rights claim. The judge heard the appeal under section 82(1) of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002.
2. The appellant now appeals against the decision of the judge with the limited permission of First-tier Tribunal Judge Boyes.
3. The judge made an order for anonymity. I maintain that order in light of the appellant’s protection claim, which remains pending.
Factual background
4. Following his arrival in the UK, appellant’s date of birth was assessed by a local authority to be 25 April 2005. That date of birth is the date of birth which was adopted by the Secretary of State in the course of deciding the asylum claim made by the appellant and which is a significant feature in these proceedings to which I shall return.
5. The appellant arrived in the United Kingdom on 31 May 2022. On his assessed date of birth, he would have been 17 at the time. He claimed asylum the next day, on 1 June 2022. The basis of the claim was that the appellant was a Kurdish kolbar, or smuggler, working on the Iran-Iraq border. He claimed that he had been the target of the authorities’ attention on account of his illicit activities, and that he would be persecuted through disproportionate punishment and inhuman treatment upon his return, as a result of his Kurdish ethnicity.
6. The claim was refused by a decision dated 15 February 2023. The Secretary of State accepted the appellant’s claim to be a Kurdish citizen of Iran, but did not accept the kolbar part of his narrative. She did not accept that he been intercepted by the authorities, along with a number of others, nor that he faced the risk of being punished and subject to reprisals on account of his Kurdish ethnicity, as he had claimed.
7. The Secretary of State considered that the objective evidence suggested that the enforcement of anti-smuggling laws was not a priority for the Iranian authorities. Smugglers were generally officially tolerated, the decision contended, since so many members of the Iranian population relied on smuggled goods to evade the sanctions to which Iran is subject. Smuggling was in the interests of the Iranian elite. Only 370 kolbars had been killed during Iranian border police law enforcement activities over the preceding year, against an estimated total of 170,000 kolbars operating in the region. The appellant would not be at risk.
8. The Secretary of State also concluded that the appellant’s claim was internally inconsistent in a number of material respects. This related, in particular, to the number of individuals with whom he claimed to have been arrested and related details.
9. Part of the appellant’s claim had been that he had lost contact with his family. The Secretary of State also rejected that aspect of the claim. The decision referred to HB (Kurds) Iran CG [2018] UKUT 430. In summary, the country...