Judges let Iranian burglar under a deportation order since 2007 stay in Britain because he faces torture at home

Published 30 October 2026, 11:49

• An Upper Tribunal ruling accepted he was likely arrested in Iran for smuggling banned political materials.
• His elder brother T was 'arrested and executed' for political activities, while another brother won refugee status in Britain.
• Experts warned the recent conflict with Israel and the US has 'only increased the regime's paranoia'.

An Iranian man who has been under a deportation order since 2007 and accumulated a string of criminal convictions in Britain has won the right to stay after judges ruled he faces a real risk of torture if returned to Iran.

The man, identified only as AX to protect his safety, arrived in the UK in December 2000 and claimed asylum, which was refused in 2004.

He was convicted of burglary and theft in June 2003 and sentenced to 18 months in prison.

Further convictions followed in 2005 and 2006, including interfering with a vehicle and breaching a suspended sentence, leading to a deportation order being signed in June 2007.

Subsequent offences included possession of crack cocaine in 2008, drug cautions in 2015, a shoplifting caution in 2016, and a common assault caution in January 2024.

Despite that record, the Upper Tribunal allowed his appeal on Refugee Convention and human rights grounds, finding it "reasonably likely" he would be detained, interrogated, and tortured on return.

AX's protection claim rested on three pillars.

His elder brother T was arrested and executed in the 1990s for anti-revolutionary activities.

Another brother, NX, was granted refugee status in the UK in 2004 after being detained and tortured in Iran because of T's political connections.

And AX himself claimed he was arrested while smuggling banned political materials into Iran, held for approximately two years at Shahid Rajae prison in Bandar Abbas, and tortured — an ordeal that left him with lasting mental health problems, including a diagnosis of first-episode psychosis in 2021.

The tribunal found the smuggling claim credible in part because of a striking piece of independent evidence: NX had told his own asylum adjudicator in 1999 — before AX even arrived in the UK — that AX "was imprisoned for four years after being found in possession of UFIN or MEK publications."

Country expert Dr Kakhki confirmed that Shahid Rajae was the correct name of a real prison near Bandar Abbas, consistent with AX's account.

Medical experts Dr Galappathie and Dr Preston found AX's mental health presentation consistent with his account of torture in Iran, and neither believed he was feigning or exaggerating his symptoms.

On the risk of return, Dr Kakhki assessed that AX faced a probable risk of detention upon returning to Iran, citing a combination of factors: his prior involvement in smuggling, the fact that he had left the country illegally, his lengthy time abroad, his familial connections, and the circumstance of returning on an emergency travel document.

Dr Hafidh reported that torture is "a routine method of interrogation in Iran" and warned that "the recent conflict with Israel and the United States has only increased the regime's paranoia."

The tribunal concluded that, given AX's previous arrest for possessing illicit political materials and his family connections to T and NX — "both believed by the authorities to be politically active against the regime" — he was likely to be "interrogated and subjected to treatment crossing the Article 3 threshold and amounting to persecution on the grounds of actual or imputed political opinion."

The First-tier Tribunal had dismissed AX's appeal in September 2025, but Upper Tribunal Judge Kebede found in April 2026 that the lower judge had made errors of law by failing to properly assess the impact of NX's refugee status and T's execution.

Judge Kebede accepted that AX's failure to advance his family association claim in 2004 and 2007 was explained by the fact that "the appellant appeared as a litigant in person" with mental health problems.