CCPR/C/119/D/2530/2015
several months in a monastery in Alexandria before leaving the country on an unspecified
date.
2.4
The authors arrived in Denmark on 19 February 2014 and applied for asylum the
next day. On 26 June 2014, the Danish Immigration Service denied their asylum
applications. On 16 December 2014, the Refugee Appeals Board denied their appeals. In its
decision, the Board denied F’s request to postpone the case so that he could undergo a
medical examination for signs of torture. The authors maintain that they have exhausted all
domestic remedies, since the Board’s decision may not be appealed to the Danish courts,
and that they have not submitted the same matter for consideration to another international
complaint mechanism.
The complaint
3.1
The authors assert that the State party would violate their rights under articles 7, 9
and 18 (1) of the Covenant by forcibly removing them to Egypt, where they risk being
subjected anew to religious persecution, and where F also risks being subjected to torture
and arbitrary arrest owing to G’s involvement in her neighbour’s conversion to Christianity.
3.2
Although Christianity is recognized as a religion in Egypt, helping someone to
convert from Islam to Christianity is a punishable offence, and persecution of Christian
Copts is increasing. On 1 January 2011, a car bomb detonated at the Al-Qiddissin Coptic
church in Alexandria, just as congregants were exiting the church. Some 21 individuals
were killed, and about 70 were injured. In April 2013, six Coptic Christians and one
Muslim individual were killed during a sectarian clash in Al-Khosous, Al-Qalyubiyah. At
the subsequent funeral, riots broke out and a Coptic Christian and a Muslim were killed.
Video recordings of the incident show that the police failed to stop people from throwing
rocks and bottles at the cathedral in which the funeral was held.
3.3
Although the Board found that the authors’ accounts were inconsistent and not
credible, the authors have suffered enormous trauma, and F has resulting memory and other
health problems. The inconsistencies between their accounts are therefore understandable.
In addition, chronological inconsistencies between the authors’ narratives can be explained
by the fact that the authors use the Coptic calendar, which differs considerably from the
Gregorian calendar. Moreover, although the events the authors describe were not always in
chronological order, the authors have always described the events themselves consistently.
The Committee against Torture has stated that complete accuracy is seldom to be expected
from victims of torture.
State party’s observations on admissibility and the merits
4.1
In its observations dated 14 July 2015, the State party provides extensive
information on domestic asylum procedures,3 and explains the basis for the findings of the
Board. The Board observed that the authors had made inconsistent statements concerning
the manner in which they had discovered that their apartment had been vandalized, and the
length of time they had stayed with F’s parents before moving to a monastery. Although the
Board accepted as fact that G lent a Bible to her neighbour and helped her to contact a
priest, it considered that these activities could not be characterized as missionary work
owing to their limited nature. Moreover, G was not interviewed by the police about this
matter, and loaned the Bible at the end of 2012 but stayed in Egypt until January 2014. The
Board did not accept as facts the authors’ remaining claims, including F’s claim that he had
been detained and tortured. Noting that the Muslim Brotherhood is considered a terrorist
organization in Egypt, the Board stated that general conditions for Coptic Christians in
Egypt did not independently justify granting asylum.
4.2
The Board does not initiate examinations for signs of torture when it does not accept
as facts the asylum seekers’ grounds for asylum. In this case, the Board did not accept as
fact F’s claim that he had been detained and subjected to torture. On this basis, the Board
3
See communication No. 2379/2014, Ahmed v. Denmark, Views adopted on 7 July 2016, paras. 4.14.4.
3