CAT/C/63/D/719/2015 Abrahamyan forced H.A. to sign three statements containing false details of the demonstrations.1 2.2 Following the events of 1 March 2008, accomplices of Mr. Abrahamyan regularly visited H.A., and forced her to memorize witness statements containing false information about Nikol Pashinyan, a leading member of the Armenian National Congress and supporter of Levon Ter-Petrosyan, a candidate in the 2008 presidential elections. The statements were to be made during Mr. Pashinyan’s upcoming trial. In March 2009, accomplices of Mr. Abrahamyan held H.A. hostage for three weeks in a house in Arashat, regularly beating and abusing her. Her brother, Garik, her partner, G.H., and two friends freed her, and she fled to Georgia. Garik was later murdered for freeing her. 2 Accomplices of Mr. Abrahamyan subsequently harassed G.H., after he told his manager about H.A.’s situation. He was dismissed from his job and his home was raided by three men, who told him to make sure that H.A. returned to Armenia or she would be hunted down due to her protest and knowledge of the plot to produce false incriminating evidence against Mr. Pashinyan concerning crimes allegedly committed in February and March 2008. Soon afterwards,3 G.H. fled to Georgia, where he joined H.A. They then travelled together to the Netherlands via Kiev. On 28 October 2010, the complainants entered the Netherlands and applied for asylum. 2.3 On 1 June 2011, the Immigration and Naturalization Office issued a notice of intention to reject the asylum applications on the basis that the complainants had provided insufficient identification and travel documents. 4 The Office did not dispute the events of 1 March 2008, including H.A.’s forced administration of medical assistance, her beating and her forced signature of three statements regarding the demonstration. However, it challenged the credibility of both complainants’ statements regarding the subsequent harassment at the hands of Mr. Abrahamyan’s accomplices, the identity of those accomplices, and H.A.’s kidnapping and memorization under duress of witness statements. On 18 July 2011, the complainants requested an individual investigation into, and a report on, the evidence available. However, on 19 July 2011, the Office rejected both complainants’ applications based on their insufficient identity and travel documents, and consequently applied the strict credibility test to their accounts. 2.4 The complainants’ appeals against that decision were rejected by the Regional Court of the Hague and the Administrative Jurisdiction Division of the Council of State on 8 May and 24 September 2012, respectively. In a summary judgment without reasoning, the Administrative Jurisdiction Division declared that their appeals were ill-founded. 2.5 On 21 July 2014, the complainants filed a second asylum application based on a medical report by the Netherlands Institute for Human Rights and Medical Research, in which it was found that H.A.’s physical ailments and post-traumatic stress disorder were consistent with her asylum application. The report concluded that it was likely that her symptoms had impeded her ability to present complete, coherent and consistent statements during her initial asylum interviews. 5 On 18 August 2014, the Immigration and Naturalization Office determined that the Institute’s report was not a new fact and thus could not alter the initial asylum application decision. They issued a notice of intention to reject, also noting new information from the Belgian authorities that both complainants had applied for visas for Italy in Yerevan on 27 September 2010 and had been granted single- 1 2 3 4 5 2 The statements included information that H.A. had witnessed Nikol Pashinyan and his accomplices telling other demonstrators to use violence against the police, distributing weapons and ordering the demonstrators to use those weapons. No details provided. No dates provided. Under the domestic law of the Netherlands, failure to provide this information means that the Immigration and Naturalization Office applies a strict credibility test to asylum applications, setting a higher standard of proof for the complainants. The test was applied pursuant to section 31 (2) (a)–(f) of the Aliens Act of 2000. Pursuant to section 4:6 of the General Administrative Law Code, a new asylum application will only be judged on its merits if the applicant adduces new facts and circumstances that could not have been adduced previously.

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