CAT/C/53/D/450/2011
2.2
In 2002, when his employer suggested to him that he should marry a neighbour’s
daughter, the complainant felt obliged to disclose his Akhdam background, which in
principle barred him from marrying a woman from another caste. This sparked an angry
response from his employer, who dismissed him and suggested that he should flee before
the neighbour found out and tried to kill him. The complainant therefore fled to Sana’a and
stayed in an Akhdam camp where his brother was living.
2.3
The complainant asserts that, when the young woman’s father heard about the
complainant’s Akhdam background, he considered that his family’s honour had been
sullied and went looking for him. The young woman’s father also lodged a complaint
against the complainant’s employer, who was arrested, then released.
2.4
On 26 December 2002, the police arrested the complainant in the Akhdam camp in
Sana’a and imprisoned him for theft and possession of false identity papers. 1 When he
arrived at the criminal investigation prison in Sana’a, the guards accused him of trying to
sully the honour of the Yemeni people. As a result, he was tortured. The complainant was
beaten and his head plunged in a container filled with human urine and excrement before
being thrown into a basin of ice-cold water to wash himself. He was subsequently placed
alone in a cell measuring approximately 1.5 by 2 square metres, where he slept on the floor,
still in his wet clothes. During the interrogations, the criminal investigation officers asked
him questions about the alleged theft. They also asked him why he had tried to dishonour
Yemen by applying for an identity card, since, as an Akhdam, he had no rights and he
belonged with filth. Following each interrogation and torture session, he was left alone in a
cell until he felt better. He was subsequently placed in a shared cell with other detainees.
The forms of torture that he endured included being sodomized with a Coca-Cola bottle,
which caused injuries and bleeding. He was also regularly beaten up and insulted,
suspended by his feet until he lost consciousness and burned with cigarettes. This treatment
was inflicted on him daily throughout the first week, and then about three times a week
thereafter.
2.5
On 13 June 2003, a man dressed as a sheik ordered the prison guard to open the door
of the complainant’s cell. The complainant notes that everything appeared to have been
arranged with the guards by his former employer, who had contacts among the authorities.
According to the complainant, his former employer allegedly also helped him to escape, out
of fear that, when on trial, the complainant might disclose the employer’s engine oil
smuggling activities. The complainant was then brought to another man’s house, where he
remained in hiding until his departure from Yemen, which was organized and paid for by
his former employer. At that moment, the man handed him a newspaper containing a
summons for him to appear in court and told him that failure to appear would result in a
trial in absentia under the law applicable to fugitives.
2.6
On 25 August 2003, the complainant flew to Cairo accompanied by a Somali
national, who passed him off as his son on his passport. On 29 August 2003, they took off
for Geneva. From there, they were supposed to travel by train to the Netherlands and then
on to the United Kingdom. When they arrived in Geneva, the Somali national, after saying
that he was going out to find something to eat, never returned.
2.7
On 1 September 2003, the complainant applied for asylum in Switzerland, citing the
risk of persecution and torture in his country of origin because of belonging to the Akhdam
caste.
1
GE.15-00369
The complainant, on the other hand, has provided a statement by his officially appointed lawyer (in
Arabic with an English translation), which states that he was charged by a court for alcohol
consumption, prostitution and debauchery. The complainant also provides a note from his lawyer,
dated 21 June 2006, indicating that the complainant is considered to be a fugitive from justice and that
the prosecution had postponed laying charges before the court.
3