AA/05412/2014 — Secretary of State's appeal dismissed: live witness evidence preferred over a disputed passport never produced in court

The Secretary of State appealed against a successful asylum claim by a woman (claimed born Sulaibiya, 2 July 1989) who said she fled Kuwait, undocumented, to escape a forced marriage. The Home Office's case rested on an Iraqi passport in a different name allegedly found in the people-smuggler's luggage. THE UPPER TRIBUNAL DISMISSED THE SECRETARY OF STATE'S APPEAL, preferring the claimant's live witness evidence over the disputed passport specifically BECAUSE the passport itself was never produced to the court for inspection and no forensic document examiner gave evidence about it. NM (2013) is not referenced in the determination. USE IN A REPORT/BEFORE A TRIBUNAL: a directly citable point on the EVIDENTIAL WEIGHT of a disputed identity document the Home Office relies on but does not produce or have forensically examined — squarely relevant wherever a Home Office refusal cites an unproduced or unexamined document to contest Bidoon/undocumented status.

Supports insisting that any document the Home Office relies on to rebut a claim be produced and, where disputed, independently examined.