CAT/C/23/D/107/1998
page 3
1.2
In accordance with article 22, paragraph 3, of the Convention, the Committee transmitted
the communication to the State party on 11 March 1998. At the same time the State party was
requested, pursuant to rule 108, paragraph 9, of the Committee’s rules of procedure, not to expel
the author to Turkey while his communication was under consideration by the Committee. In a
submission of 15 April 1998 the State party informed the Committee that measures had been
taken to ensure that the author would not be returned to Turkey while his case was pending
before the Committee.
The facts as submitted by the author
2.1
The author comes from the south-eastern part of Turkey. He states that, although
sympathetic towards the cause of the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) he was not involved in
political activities. He performed his military service with the Turkish army in 1992/93. He ran
a shoe shop together with his father in the village of Gaziantep. Although not politically active,
he was arrested by the police on two occasions in August and September 1994, on suspicion of
helping the PKK, and was kept in detention for a brief period. During one of his detentions he
was severely beaten, resulting in the loss of one of his teeth and damage to others. On both
occasions he was released without charge.
2.2
In early 1995 a member of the PKK whom they did not know contacted the author and
his father and asked them to supply the organization with a large quantity of shoes. Being
sympathetic towards the organization, the author and his father accepted the deal and shoes were
supplied on a weekly basis. According to the author, his cousin, who was working actively for
the PKK and came sometimes to collect the weekly ration of shoes, was arrested by the Turkish
police in March 1995 while in possession of the shoes. Under torture he informed the police that
the author was making shoes for the PKK. The police then looked for the author at his domicile,
but the author managed to escape and hide. His father was arrested in order to make the author
show up. The author decided to leave the country and arranged his departure with the help of
smugglers. He later learned that his cousin had been killed while trying to escape from prison.
2.3
The author arrived in Switzerland on 20 April 1995 and immediately applied for asylum.
The Federal Office for Refugees (ODR) rejected his application on 14 November 1996. On
12 January 1998 the Appeal Commission for Asylum Matters (CRA) turned down the author’s
appeal.
2.4
The author complains that his interviews with the Swiss asylum authorities were
conducted without the assistance of a lawyer and disagrees with the arguments used by those
authorities to conclude that he lacked credibility and reject his application. The Swiss authorities
indicated that there were a number of contradictions in the information supplied by the author
during his three interviews with asylum officers. Those contradictions concerned, inter alia, the
author’s profession, the request he had received to make shoes for the PKK and the arrests to
which he had been subjected in 1994. The author provides the Committee with detailed
explanations designed to demonstrate that there are no such contradictions and that he has told
the truth about the reasons that motivated his departure from the country.