CAT/C/23/D/127/1999
page 4
2.7
On 18 June 1997 the Directorate of Immigration turned down his application for asylum,
mainly on the basis of a verification report by the Norwegian Embassy in Nairobi, on the basis of
contradictory information said to have been given by the author and his mother and
chronological discrepancies in his story. He appealed on 3 July 1997. The appeal was rejected
by the Ministry of Justice on 29 December 1997 on the same grounds. On 5 January 1998, a
request for reconsideration was made which received a negative decision from the Ministry of
Justice on 25 August 1998.
2.8
According to the author, his right to free legal assistance had been exhausted and the
Advisory Group agreed to take his case on a voluntary basis. On 1 and 9 September 1998, the
Advisory Group made additional requests for reconsideration and deferred execution of the
expulsion decision, which were rejected on 16 September 1999. The author has submitted to the
Committee, in this regard, copies of 16 pieces of correspondence between the Advisory Group
and the Ministry of Justice, including a medical certificate from a psychiatric nurse indicating
that the author suffers from post-traumatic stress syndrome. The date of expulsion was finally
set for 21 January 1999.
2.9
The author states that all the inconsistencies regarding dates referred to by the Norwegian
authorities can be explained by the fact that during the initial interrogation he agreed to be
questioned in English, not having been informed that he had the right to have an Amharic
interpreter present. He states that since the difference in years between the Ethiopian and
Norwegian calendar is approximately eight years, when he tried to calculate the time in
Norwegian terms and translate this into English, several dates became confused. The situation
was further complicated by the fact that in Ethiopia the day starts at the equivalent of 6 o’clock
in the morning in Norway. That meant that when the author said “2 o’clock” , for instance, it
should be interpreted as “8 o’clock”.
2.10 The author further states that during the interrogation he referred to the Southern
Ethiopian People’s Democratic Coalition (SEPDC) as the “Southern People’s Political
Organization” (SPPO), which does not exist. He claims that the error was due to the fact that he
only knew the name of the organization in Amharic. However, he gave the correct name of the
leader of the SEPDC, who was one of his contact persons.
2.11 Finally, the author provided a detailed explanation regarding the discrepancies between
his statements and the information provided by his mother to the representative of the Norwegian
Embassy in Nairobi.
The complaint
3.
The author argues that he would be in danger of being imprisoned again and tortured if
he were to return to Ethiopia. He says that during the asylum procedure, the immigration
authorities did not seriously examine the merits of his asylum claim and did not pay enough
attention to his political activities and his history of detention.