CAT/C/22/D/112/1998
page 4
The State party's observations on the admissibility and merits of
the communication
4.1
In a letter of 19 August 1998, the State party informed the Committee
that it had been unable to accede to the Committee's invitation of
23 June 1998, pursuant to article 108, paragraph 9, of its rules of procedure,
not to expel or return the author to Turkey since he and his family had
been missing since 15 September 1996. On 27 November 1998, the State party
informed the Committee that the author and his family had reappeared and that
the ODR had requested the immigration authorities of the Canton of Berne not
to enforce the return while the present communication was pending before
the Committee. The State party also indicated that it did not contest the
admissibility of the communication.
4.2
As to substance, the State party notes that the author has, in his
communication to the Committee, recapitulated the arguments he adduced in
support of his application for asylum. In the latter he had stated that he
had given financial support to active members of the PKK. In addition, he
had provided them with food and clothing. He stated that he had been arrested
for the first time in 1977 and that, in 1982, he had been put under pressure
to cooperate with the Turkish information service. He claims that his return
to Turkey would expose him to the risk of rearrest and torture (known as
“deliberate persecution”).
4.3
According to the State party, the statements made by the author at
his hearings before the ODR on 30 August and 2 December 1991 contained
factual inconsistencies and contradictions. The private medical examination
of 31 January 1998 - six and a half years after the deposit of his application
for asylum - did not prove that the post-traumatic disorders had originated at
a time prior to his departure from his country. Even if the author had been
subjected to torture, the Swiss authorities considered that he would not be in
danger of being subjected to “deliberate persecution” on his return to Turkey
in view of, inter alia, the information obtained by the Swiss embassy in
Ankara that the author was not wanted by the police and was not forbidden to
hold a passport.
4.4
The competent Swiss authorities mentioned the lack of credibility of the
author's statement that he had been tortured during his detention from 15 to
28 May 1991. In support of his communication, the author states, as he had
previously done before the Swiss authorities, that on 15 May 1991 the security
forces had come to his home looking for his cousin N.D. When they did not
find his cousin, they allegedly took him to Pazarcik police station and then
to Kahramanmaras, where they tortured him. During his hearing before the
immigration authorities on 2 December 1991, the author stated that he had been
beaten with rubber truncheons while blindfolded and with his hands bound. He
had also allegedly been subjected to electric shocks. When questioned on this
point, he had claimed that the electric wire had been attached to his toes and
that his whole body had shaken. He had been able to describe in detail the
appliance from which the electric shocks originated: “There was a sort of
grip which they attached to my toes. There was also an appliance like
a battery which they plugged in”. The ODR and CRA had noted certain
inconsistencies in the author's account. He had allegedly been blindfolded
while being taken to the place where he had been tortured, but he had