CAT/C/60/D/653/2015
The facts as presented by the complainants
2.1
Between 2010 and 2013, A.M.D. provided help on several occasions to his brother,
who was a Chechen rebel. The brother visited A.M.D. numerous times, usually at night,
seeking shelter; A.M.D. bought clothes and medicine for him. During the night between 29
and 30 June 2013, shortly after a visit from his brother, A.M.D. was detained by armed
masked men who, he assumed, were from the pro-Russian Chechen authorities. A.M.D.
was beaten; M.M.Y. was hit and lost consciousness.
2.2
A.M.D. was detained for nine days, during which time he was interrogated and
tortured. He was starved, beaten with objects such as plastic bottles filled with water and
subjected to very painful electric shocks. He was hit on his entire body, including his head
and neck.2 The authorities also threatened to kill him and his family and to rape his teenage
daughter. A.M.D. was released after he promised to hand over his brother to the authorities
the next time he visited.
2.3
The complainants arrived in Denmark with their three minor sons on 24 July 2013
and applied for asylum the same day.
2.4
In August 2013, the complainants’ house in Chechnya was deliberately set on fire
and burned by an unknown assailant. 3 Neighbours with whom the complainants had
remained in contact informed A.M.D. that the police had prevented them and the fire
brigade from extinguishing the fire. According to the complainants, that indicated that
police officers may have been accomplices in the arson.
2.5
The Danish Immigration Service interviewed the complainants on 9 August, 7
November and 11 November 2013 and on 18 July 2014. On 11 November 2013, A.M.D.
signed a consent form stating that he had been subjected to torture and that he agreed to
undergo a medical examination. The Service failed, however, to order the examination for
the complainant and rejected his asylum claim on 9 December 2013. On 8 May 2014, the
complainants’ counsel made a submission to the Danish Refugee Appeals Board. The
Board returned the case to the Service on 26 May 2014, annulling its first decision because
new information had been submitted in relation to the complainants’ application. On 4
August 2014, the Service again rejected the complainants’ request for asylum.
2.6
At the beginning of December 2014, A.M.D. received from his daughter, who was
still living in Chechnya, the copy of an order dated 26 July 2013 issued by an investigator
of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The order called for a criminal investigation to be
opened against A.M.D. under articles 32 and 33 of the Criminal Code of the Russian
Federation. On 8 December 2014, the complainants’ counsel made a written submission to
the Refugee Appeals Board requesting again that an investigation be carried out to verify
whether A.M.D. had been tortured in the past. The Board rejected the asylum claim on 19
December 2014 without commenting on the request for a medical torture examination. The
Board gave the complainants 15 days to leave the country voluntarily. At the time of
submitting the communication to the Committee, no deportation date had been set but the
complainants maintained that their deportation was imminent. The complainants submitted
that they had exhausted all domestic remedies given that under the Danish Aliens Act the
decisions of the Board could not be challenged before the courts.
2
3
2
On 7 April 2015, A.M.D. submitted a medical certificate dated 27 March 2015 issued by the Amnesty
International Danish Medical Group, stating that his psychological status was consistent with posttraumatic stress disorder and that the torture that he had described was consistent with the physical
and psychological symptoms and the objective findings presented during the examination.
The complainants submitted a copy of the certificate issued by the fire brigade in Grozny stating that
a property at a particular address had burned down completely as a result of arson. They also
submitted the copy of a certificate dated 14 October 2013 from the investigative department of the
Ministry of Internal Affairs stating that a case of arson, at the above-mentioned particular address,
was being investigated and that it had been established that the fire had been started by an unknown
armed man who subsequently prevented the neighbours and the fire brigade to extinguish the fire.