H v Secretary of State for the Home Department

In an asylum appeal, the tribunal must ask whether the evidence establishes a real risk of persecution on return, including a risk arising from activities undertaken abroad. It is insufficient simply to observe that there is no evidence that the foreign authorities made a specific record of those activities. The tribunal must engage with relevant expert evidence about the authorities’ general practice and explain any rejection of it.

Where credibility findings depend on a logical inference from alleged inconsistencies, the tribunal must examine all material premises of that inference. A failure to address relevant expert evidence bearing on those premises may make the determination unsustainable. The appeal was therefore allowed and the case remitted for a general rehearing.

The appellant, a Syrian Kurd, claimed asylum after arriving in the United Kingdom. His case relied on political activities in Syria, demonstrations in the United Kingdom, and an asserted risk on return arising from unlawful departure. An Immigration Judge rejected his evidence and dismissed the material aspects of his claim.

Permission to appeal was granted on issues concerning the treatment of expert evidence about Syrian authorities’ monitoring of overseas demonstrations and the credibility findings concerning the appellant’s activities in Syria. The Court of Appeal considered whether the tribunal had asked the correct risk question and had properly engaged with the expert evidence.

1. Appeal allowed and matter remitted. The Immigration Judge had failed to address whether the appellant faced a real risk of being identified on return as someone who had taken an anti-regime stance in the United Kingdom. The absence of evidence of a specific record concerning the appellant did not answer that question. The relevant issue was whether the general activities and posture of the Syrian authorities created a real risk of persecution.
2. The tribunal had also failed to engage with material evidence from Dr George when assessing credibility. That evidence concerned the similarity of Kurdish party names, the absence of an invariable practice of immediately targeting relatives of detained persons, and the status and repression of the Kurdish Popular Union Party’s organisation in exile.
3. Although credibility findings ordinarily attract considerable caution on appellate review, a tribunal must examine the material premises of a logical inference used to establish inconsistency or mendacity. Failure to address relevant expert evidence meant that important credibility issues had not been adequately determined.
4. The court declined permission on the separate issue of risk arising merely from return as a former asylum seeker, considering it open to the tribunal to find that the evidence did not establish a sufficient risk. That issue could be revisited if the rehearing produced different findings about the appellant’s activities in Syria.
5. The case was remitted to the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal for rehearing generally. Leave was given for further evidence limited to the sur place issue, particularly the attitude of the Syrian authorities; any wider application to improve the evidence required application to the tribunal.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): allowed the appeal against the Immigration Judge’s determination and remitted the matter to the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal for rehearing generally.
• Asylum and Immigration Tribunal: Immigration Judge Frank Appleyard determined the claim on 6 July 2005. The judgment under appeal followed an earlier adverse adjudicator’s decision which had been remitted by the Immigration Appeal Tribunal.