MN v The Secretary of State for the Home Department

Facts

The appellant, MN, is a citizen of Afghanistan who claimed protection on 25 July 2023. He said his father had served as a military doctor with the Afghan National Police and that his family held ideological support for the National Resistance Front, his father and brother having volunteered with the NRF after the Taliban took Kabul and fled when the province to which they travelled also fell. He said he left Afghanistan in consequence and that the Taliban had since attended the family home searching for him and accusing him of NRF involvement. The Secretary of State accepted that he is an Afghan national but rejected the remaining material facts, largely on credibility grounds, refusing the claim on 20 November 2024. He appealed to the First-tier Tribunal under the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, the claim falling to be considered under sections 30 to 39 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022. At the hearing the parties agreed that the claim was advanced on the Convention reasons of race and political opinion; that the feared treatment, taken at its highest, would amount to persecution; that if the facts were accepted there would be neither sufficiency of protection nor internal relocation; that he is now an adult; that sur place activity was relied on only as supporting credibility; and that the Article 8 appeal stood or fell with the protection claim. The sole live issue was credibility.