CAT/C/32/D/214/2002
Page 3
1.3
On 11 November 2002, the State party submitted its observations on the
admissibility of the complaint together with a motion asking the Committee to
withdraw its request for interim measures, pursuant to Rule 108, paragraph 7, of the
Committees rules of procedure. In his comments, dated 23 December 2002, on the
State party’s observations on admissibility, counsel asked the Committee to maintain
its request for interim measures until a final decision on the complaint has been taken.
On 4 April 2002, the Committee, through its Rapporteur on new communications and
interim measures, decided not to withdraw its request for interim measures.
The facts as submitted by the complainant
2.1
The complainant arrived in Germany in December 1990 and claimed political
asylum on 21 January 1991, stating that he had been arrested for a week in 1989 and
tortured by the police in Mazgirt because of his objection to the conduct of superiors
during military service. As a PKK sympathiser, he was being persecuted and his life
was in danger in Turkey. On 20 August 1991, the Federal Agency for the Recognition
of Foreign Refugees (Bundesamt für die Anerkennung ausländischer Flüchtlinge)
rejected the complainant’s application on the basis of inconsistencies in his counts.
2.2
The complainant appealed the decision of the Federal Agency before the
Wiesbaden Administrative Court which dismissed the appeal on 7 September 1999.
On 17 April 2001, the Higher Administrative Court of Hessen refused leave to appeal
from that judgment.
2.3
On 7 December 2001, the City of Hanau issued an expulsion order against the
complainant, together with a notification of imminent deportation. The expulsion was
based on the fact that the complainant had been sentenced by penal order, dated 16
January 1995, of the District Court of Groβ-Gerau to a suspended prison term of four
months for participation in a highway blockade organized by PKK sympathisers in
March 1994.
2.4
On 17 January 2001, the complainant applied to the Federal Agency to reopen
proceedings in his case, arguing that he had been trained by the PKK in a camp in the
Netherlands in 1994, with a view to joining the PKK’s armed forces in Southeast
Turkey, a duty from which he had been exempted at his subsequent request. He
further claimed that the Turkish authorities knew about his PKK activities and, in
particular, his participation in the highway blockade, on the basis of his conviction for
joint coercion of road traffic.
2.5
By decision of 6 February 2002, the Federal Agency rejected the application to
reopen asylum proceedings, stating that the complainant could have raised these fresh
arguments in the initial proceedings, and that his submissions lacked credibility. On
26 February 2002, the complainant appealed this decision before the Frankfurt
Administrative Court, where proceedings were still pending in this regard at the time
of the initial submission of the complaint.