Upper Tribunal (Immigration and asylum chamber), 2016-04-27, AA/08220/2015
| Jurisdiction | UK Non-devolved |
| Date | 27 April 2016 |
| Published date | 18 April 2017 |
| Hearing Date | 03 February 2016 |
| Status | Unreported |
| Court | Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) |
| Appeal Number | AA/08220/2015 |
Appeal Number: AA/08220/2015
Upper Tribunal
(Immigration and Asylum Chamber) Appeal Number: AA/08220/2015
THE IMMIGRATION ACTS
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Heard at Field House |
Decision and Reasons Promulgated |
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On 3 February 2016 |
On 27 April 2016 |
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Before
DEPUTY UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE CHANA
Between
[A D]
(anonymity direction not made)
Appellant
and
THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent
Representation:
For the Appellant: Counsel
For the Respondent: Senior Presenting Officer
Decision and Reasons
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The appellant claims that he is a citizen of Afghanistan born on [ ] 1999. He appealed against the decision of the respondent dated 21 May 2015 to refuse to grant him asylum and on humanitarian protection in the United Kingdom. First-tier Tribunal Judge D Ross dismissed the appellant’s appeal on 10 November 2015.
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Permission to appeal granted by First-tier Tribunal Judge Pooler on 8 December 2015 who found that it is arguable that the Judge’s failure to consider s55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009 was a material error of law as the appellant was a child aged 16. He also stated that the Judge gave two principal reasons for placing little weight on the report as to the appellant’s nationality. The first was that the report was not been signed by either expert. This mistake of fact and his placing little weight on the report, was a significant factor in his assessment of the appellant’s nationality.
The First-tier Tribunal’s findings
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The First-tier Tribunal Judge made the following findings in dismissing the appellant’s appeal which I set out in summary.
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The appellant travelled by road to the United Kingdom arriving on 17 September 2014. At his screening interview for children on 24 September 2014, the appellant indicated that he would be harmed if returned to Afghanistan. He said that he lived at home with his father and mother and two brothers, and that he had left about three or four months ago. He said that he was handed to a man, by his mother, who put him in the vehicle. He did not know what countries he has passed through. He was told he was being taken to the United Kingdom.
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The appellant claims he is 15 years old and of Pashtun ethnicity. He was born in Jalalabad. His older brother Hammza is dead. He was taken by four or five Taliban in the car into the hills. They told him he has to fight with the Taliban. His father has also disappeared. He managed to escape from the camp at night and walk through the forest and arrived back home at about midday. His mother took him to a relative’s house to hide after a couple of days. They lived in a different village. The Taliban came to his house and took his father and told him that he was responsible for his escape. After a while his mother told him that his father had probably been killed and decided that it was too dangerous for him and handed him over to an agent. About a month later, he left Afghanistan because he could not live there.
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Rather unusually, the appellant’s nationality has not been accepted by the respondent in this case. The first consideration is whether he is actually an Afghan. In analysing what he said about his home, I must bear in mind that he was only 15 years old and lived in the village all his life. He attended school for a few years and then gave up and could not read or write. So far as his languages are concerned he speaks Pashto which does not help much because that is a language which is also spoken in Pakistan.
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Looking at his answers about his village, I considered that these are very inconsistent beginning with the name of the village. At his screening interview, he said he came from “Jalalabad Khwyghai District Village.” He was asked what he remembers of his village and he said it had a hospital. In his statement he gave his address as Khugiani district in Jalalabad which is in the Nanaghar Province. The village therefore was not mentioned. In his interview he gave the name of village as Quqhyana and later he said his village was called Khogyani and then at question hundred and 14 he said that his village was called Sherzadu and in his statement at paragraph 7 he said that he said that Sherzado is his village that he had not understood the question. He said Sherzad is the name of the district and his village is called Kodikhail.
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There were also other gaps in the appellant knowledge and there were also inconsistencies. He indicated in his screening interview that there was a hospital in his village, but in his interview he said he could not remember much about his village only that there were fields, trees and a square. He could not remember any buildings or landmarks. He said that the hospital was not close but it was very far away. He was asked what was the name of the shop in the village and the name of the man running the shop. He claimed that as he did not go out much, he does not know. He was asked about the mosque and said that although it had a name, he could not remember what it was. Similarly, he could not remember the name of his school, and when asked whether he could remember any teachers, he remembered only one teacher.
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The Judge, consider that bearing in mind that according to the appellant he had spent his whole life in the village, he should have had no difficulty in remembering the name of the village, whether there was a hospital in the village, and what the village looked like. In addition, he was asked where the police station was and he said he did not know. Making every allowance for cultural differences and misspellings, it is clear that the appellant has changed his evidence about the name of his village on a number of occasions, and does not seem to know in which district the village is.
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Bearing in mind the appellant, would have only been nine years old at the time of the alleged earthquake, and it is difficult to know how much effect this had on this particular village, I do not feel I can place much weight on this particular part of the evidence.
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The appellant relies on some expert evidence about his nationality. Two Afghan experts were instructed and the conclusion which they both reached was that the appellant was from Afghanistan and that he spoke both Dari and Pushto and that Pashtu is his mother tongue and Dari his language of habitual use. However, the report was not signed by either of the experts, but was compiled by an organisation called Ariana Expert Research and Consultancy. In addition, there were a number of inconsistencies in the report, for example the author of the report stated that the appellant was fluent in both Dari and Pushto, when asked where he had learnt Dari he replied “I learnt it here in the UK and on my way to the UK.” He was asked where exactly did he learn Dari and he replied that he had heard it from some people in his village. He gave the name of his village as Kutikhel. It was later recorded that the appellant was fluent in reading the Koran in Dari. The conclusion of the experts was that he could not have learnt the level of fluency in Afghan Pushto or Afghan Dari in Pakistan, Iran or in the United Kingdom. It was obvious that both Dari and Pushtu were both the languages of habitual use for the appellant, and they considered that his use of language was consistent with an Afghan.
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I cannot give these opinions much weight because they are not signed by the experts, this is an important point because if the report has not been compiled by the experts, it has not signed and it is stated that he agrees with the content, I cannot be sure that the report is in accordance with his views. In addition, the experts do not explain the inconsistencies in the interview about the appellant’s knowledge of Dari. They seem to have dismissed his original answers that he learnt Dari in the UK and on the way to the UK, and prefer to consider that he learned how to speak Dari in Afghanistan, and that this shows that he is an Afghani.
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Although his age is taken into account at the time of the interview, his lack of knowledge about his village when he claims he has lived all his life indicates that he has not been truthful about where he has come from. There is a noteworthy contrast between his answers when he is interviewed, and what he said in his statement. But the timing when he made his statement, he has obviously been told or has worked out properly his address because he says that his village is called Kodikhail, in the Sherzad district, province of Jalalabad. This address does not make sense having regard to the background material, but bears little relation to the answers which he gave to the questions. Taking into consideration the other inconsistencies, I am not satisfied that the appellant comes from Afghanistan.
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I am also not satisfied that the appellant’s...
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