(documents unreliable and forged) Pakistan
* [2002] UKIAT 439 . That is the only reference to that case in the judge’s decision. It is notable that the judge does not express any view of his own about the application of Tanveer Ahmed to the documents in the case. The judge goes on to consider s . 8. He records the respondent’s view. He records the explanations. He does not indicate whether the accepts the explanations. He says that “some limited damage has been done to the Appellant’s credibility”, but gives neither here nor elsewhere, any indication of the extent of that damage. Indeed, elsewhere, he appears to indicate that the claim ant’s testimony is wholly credible. 15. Only after the narration of the judge’s stream of consciousness in paragraphs 20 to 22 does the judge record any thoughts about the report from Dr George. The report had been the subject of submissions which the judge had recorded. The report is evidently of importance in the context of this appeal. A particular passage in it, to which Mr Hogg referred, is as follows: “113. Should the Tribunal determine that [the claimant’s] testimony is credible, in my opinion he would be at grave risk in Egypt. 114. I must express surprise, however, that [the claimant] was able to evade the authorities for so long after his release from detention in February 2015. He testifies that he was released on condition that he report to the authorities with information about the Muslim Brotherhood. He failed so to report, and relocated within Cairo. In my view it is likely that the police would have responded to his defiance of their reporting instructions and would have been able to trace him to his new address. I note in this regar d that in the period Febru ary 2015 - May 2016 he made separate trips to the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, travelling o n his own passport through Cair o airport without encountering any difficulties from the authorities (as the Home Office notes at Paragraph 55 of its Asylum Decision Letter); and that he flew to the UK without difficulty in July 2016 using his own passport and passing through Cairo airport (as the Home Office notes at Paragraphs 59-60 of Asylum Decision Letter). I note also that in February 2016 he was issued a new Egyptian passport without facing any problems (as the Home Office notes at Paragraph 56 of its Asylum Decision Letter). It is very likely that when applying for this document he would have had to provide the authorities with his address. 115. I would add that corruption is widespread amongst public officials in Egypt (see my Paragraph 101). As a result, it would be plausible that a person wanted by the authorities could pass through an airport unhindered; and [the claimant] claims that this explains why he was able to leave Egypt and return without being stopped and detained. He states that when he left Egypt for the UK he was assisted through Cairo airport by the polic e general … who had also engineered his release from detention in 2016 and whose son [the claimant] had assisted (Question 63 of the Asylum Interview Record). Against the same background of corrup tion, it is not implausible – but it is surprising , in my opinion – that [the claimant] would have been able to leave Egyp t and return unhindered twice in the 2015-2016 period, before coming to the UK. To the best of my understanding, he has not explained this. 116 . [The claimant] claims that in January 2018 the police form ally summoned him to appear at a police station. I agree with the Home Office (Paragraph 61 of the Asylum Decision Letter), that it is unclear why the police would have delayed for so long before issuing such a summons.” 16. As the judge noted, Dr George had reminded himself th at the credibility of the claim ant was a matter for the judge. But, as the Secretary of State’s grounds of appeal assert, other than because it is a matter for him, it is not at all easy to see how the judge deals with the caveats expressed by Dr George. In particular, there appears to be no proper assessment of the claim ant’s claim to be at risk if returned now, and his experiences both in Egypt and in travelling to and from Egypt in the past. We agree with the Secretary of State that this was a central matter in relation to the claim ant’s claimed fear of ill-treatment on return. It needed a clear , reasoned response from the judge. It did not have one. It is true that, somewhere about halfway through paragraph 22, the judge refers to the claimant’s movem ents and says that “I find the R espondent has overlooked the potential value to the authorities of acquiring information from the A ppellant… in terms of links between the Muslim Brotherhood and the countries visite d by the A ppellant”, but that appears to be simply speculation by the judge: it is a matter that had apparently not occurred to Dr George, and was not advanced by Mr Dixon. 17. The final passage of the judge’s decision is as follows: “24. … I allow the appeal on the basis of accepting the evidence of the Appellant and that of Dr George. I have set out my reasons. I allow the appeal on a further and separate basis . I accept the evidence of the A ppellant’s wife in addition. I allow the appeal on that basis. I allow the appeal on a further and separate basis to this. In addition I accept the medical evidence which has been provided. I find the medical evidence c orroborates the account of the A ppellant. I allow the appeal on this thir d footing. ” 18. It is very difficult indeed to know what this means. We have already noted that the judge appears to look at the evidence of Dr George after reaching a conclusion on the claim ant’s own evidence and th e individual evidence supporting it. We would normally be slow to derive such conclusions simply because of the order in which matters appear in the decision: but this decision does simply appear to be a narrative of the judge’s thought processes and so the criticism may be valid. But there can be no conceivable basis for allowing an asylum appeal by the claiman t solely on the basis of his wife’s evidence (thus, presumably, even if his own evidence was a complete fabrication) , or solely on the medical evidence, which related to orthopaedic problems with his neck and back, and mental health problems which can be fairly summarised as depression. What, instead, these final sentences of the decision indicate is that the judge specifically did not consider the evidence as a whole in assessing whether the claimant was credible in his account of the reasons for his fear of persecution on return to Egypt. 19. We are sorry to say that as well as the error of law in procedure, which we identified earlier in this decision, the judge erred by failing to produce a decision which gave intelligible and sustainable reasons, based on the evidence as a whole, for his conclusions. 20. Before us, the representatives of both parties agreed that, if we found error of law in the decision, it ought to be set aside and remitted for a fresh hearing before the First-tier Tribunal. We agree. 21. The judge’s decision involved errors of law. We set it aside. We direct that the appeal be heard entirely afresh by the First-tier Tribunal.