her expulsion was executed in accordance with the principle of nonrefoulement (article 33 of the Convention relating to the Status of
Refugees) or the prohibition of torture and other inhuman treatment
(article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights or article 3
of the Convention against Torture) considered at any time. These
principles are in fact held to be absolute, and the expiry of a
procedural deadline cannot be used to justify their violation".
5.2 Accordingly, the author declares that the decision issued by the
Swiss Appeal Commission on Asylum Matters on 18 January 1999,
from the standpoint of article 3 of the Convention against Torture and
Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment,
concerned the question of the risk of torture he faced if he was sent
back to the Syrian Arab Republic. This proves, in the author's view,
that the question on which the Committee was being asked to rule had
already been considered by the competent national authority.
Observations by the State party on the merits
6.1 The State party transmitted its remarks on the merits of the
communication on 13 September 1999. It reviewed the procedure
followed in the case and stated that with regard to the final decision that taken by the Appeal Commission on 18 January 1999 - the
Appeal Commission had conducted a review that was narrower in
scope than would have been the case had the author followed the
ordinary appeal procedures.
6.2 The State party contends that the communication contains no new
information beyond that considered when the case was dealt with
through national procedures.
6.3 Secondly, the State party points out that the author had not
provided any evidence to support several of his allegations,
particularly with regard to the statement that he had been detained in
a prison in Damascus for 96 hours for having criticized the regime
and that he had been released only after his family had paid money
and he had signed a statement renouncing politics. The author's
release was not documented. The State party also maintains that the
act of distributing anti-Government pamphlets ought to have resulted
in a heavy prison sentence. Given that the payment of money by his
family was not proved and that the author had been released after
only three months of detention, the State party believes that this can
be taken to indicate the unlikelihood of the author's alleged KDP
activities.