CAT/C/45/D/339/2008
Convention, for purposes of admissibility. Accordingly, the Committee declared the
communication admissible and requested the State party to provide its observations on the
merits of the case. The Committee also wished to receive additional information on why the
State party chose not to take into account the medical examination performed by the Danish
Red Cross and the torture examination performed by Amnesty International Denmark. In
particular, the Committee wished to know why the State party only considered whether the
complainant had been politically active, and not whether he had been tortured, taking into
account the possible relationship between political activities and torture.
6.3
Accordingly, the Committee found the communication admissible and requested the
State party to provide its observations on the merits, as well as written explanations and
statements on the request for specific information in paragraph 6.2. It was also stated that
these observations would be transmitted to the complainant.
State party’s observations on the merits
7.1
On 14 September 2009, the State party submitted that following the Committee’s
admissibility Decision it requested a supplementary opinion from the Danish Refugee
Appeals Board. On 25 August 2009, without revising its assessment of the case the Board
made the following comments on the Decision. It submits that the complainant’s statement
that he was tortured was taken into account in assessing his original asylum application and
in subsequent requests for reopening his case. It notes that the Board had included the
medical report from the Red Cross of 18 December 2003 in its original assessment of 27
September 2004. In its three decisions (24 January 2006, 22 December 2006 and 10 July
2007) denying the complainant’s requests to reopen the case on the basis of the medical
evidence on torture, the Board concluded that this information could not lead to a
reassessment of his credibility regarding this political activities and detention in Iran. Thus,
regardless of whether it was considered a fact that the complainant had been subjected to
torture in the past, the Board found that past torture in and of itself was insufficient to
warrant asylum under section 7 (1) and/or (2) of the Aliens Act. The Board also draws
attention to the government’s submission of 22 July 2008 in which it states that the Board
does not, as such dismiss the statement that the applicant has been subjected to the
“outrages” as described in Amnesty International medical report. The Board also adds that
the decision of 24 January 2006 was made by the entire Board in writing rather than the
Chairman alone, thus ensuring that the original members of the Board carefully assessed
the significance of the medical report in question.
7.2
As to the relationship between the complainant’s alleged political activities and
torture, the Board submits that although torture may contribute to evidence of political
persecution, the conditions for asylum are not necessarily satisfied in all cases where an
asylum-seeker has been subjected to torture.1 In its original decision on 27 September 2004,
the Board had found that the complainant’s claims with respect to his activities for a
monarchist organization seemed improbable based on information on the level of activity of
that organization in Iran from the UNHCR as well as other sources, the stereotypical
statement regarding the political purposes of that organization and the fact that the
complainant seemed to be politically ill-informed. The background information available
to the Board at the time it made its decision provides a homogenous and unambiguous
1
The Board refers to the Committee’s Decision in N.Z.S. v. Sweden, Decision no. 277/2005, adopted
on 29 November 2006, which referred to a case of forced removal to Iran, and in which the
Committee found no potential violation of article 3, despite the fact that it was probable that the
complainant had been tortured as the alleged events had taken place six years prior to the deportation
decision and amongst other things he had failed to adduce any evidence of political involvement of
such significance as would still attract the attention of the authorities.
6