SM v The Secretary of State for the Home Department

Facts

The appellant, SM, is an Afghan national of Pashtun ethnicity and a member of the Hazabuz tribe, who arrived in the United Kingdom as a minor and claimed asylum. His case was that his father supplied goods to the former Afghan government, its police and army, that the Taliban had consequently targeted the family, shooting and later killing his father, and that the Taliban had come to the family home looking for both of them, obliging them to flee to Kabul before the appellant left Afghanistan altogether. He claimed that, as the son of a man perceived to have supported the former government, he would face persecution on return by reason of imputed political opinion. The Secretary of State, in a decision of 20 December 2024, accepted the appellant's nationality, ethnicity, tribe and age, and accepted that if the account were true there would be neither sufficiency of protection nor the possibility of internal relocation, but rejected the core account as incredible, relying on inconsistencies between the appellant's screening interview, Statement of Evidence form, witness statements and substantive asylum interview, and questioning the weight of the supporting documents. The appellant appealed to the First-tier Tribunal on asylum, humanitarian protection and human rights grounds; the appeal was heard at Birmingham on 11 September 2026, when he gave evidence through a Pashtu interpreter and was treated as a vulnerable witness.