CAT/C/68/D/860/2018
Factual background1
2.1
The complainant, his wife and their three children arrived in Sweden in August 2012
and applied for asylum there on 25 August 2012. In his asylum application, the complainant
stated that in the late 1990s his father had been an adviser to Aslan Maskhadov, the then
president of the Chechen Republic. In 1999, the complainant’s father, mother and siblings
left Chechnya after Ramzan Kadyrov, the current head of the Republic, had ordered militia
forces loyal to him to kill the complainant’s father. The latter was arrested in Egypt at the
request of the Russian authorities. According to the complainant, following a petition from
his family and other Chechens living in Egypt, the Egyptian authorities agreed to expel the
complainant’s father to Turkey instead, where he still resides legally. Ramzan Kadyrov has
continued to mention the complainant’s father as an enemy of the regime and considers him
a spiritual leader of his opponents. Because the complainant acted as the right hand to his
father before the latter’s flight to Egypt, the complainant claims that he also risks
persecution for the same reasons. He also submits that the family belongs to the Wahhabi
faith.
2.2
The complainant states that after his father fled the country, he remained in their
home area for work and married there in 2001. Between 1999 and 2002, he assisted a rebel
movement by taking the injured to hospitals and providing them with food and lodging.
The complainant claims that the Russian authorities abducted, interrogated and tortured him
in August 2002 because they wanted to know if he had helped the rebels. They released him
after six days, following the payment of bribes. When a chauffeur, who had borrowed the
complainant’s car, was later arrested in the belief that he was the owner of the car, the
complainant left the Russian Federation and travelled to Azerbaijan, where he was reunited
with his wife.
2.3
The complainant subsequently resided in Azerbaijan, Turkey, Egypt and finally in
Dubai, each time on the basis of residence permits. The complainant submits that the
authorities in Dubai withdrew his and his family’s residence permits and subsequently
agreed to expel him to Azerbaijan instead of the Russian Federation after he explained to
them that he could not return there.
2.4
When he entered Sweden in August 2012, the complainant hid his valid Russian
passport in a bin before border controls at the airport. The border police retrieved the
passport after the complainant had told them where he had hidden it. The complainant
possessed a valid Russian passport and an expired one. He claimed to have obtained the
passports through an agent in the Russian Federation, as he was abroad when they were
issued. The Swedish authorities found that the picture on the complainant’s valid passport
had been tampered with and therefore confiscated the document. They found the expired
passport to be an authentic, original document. The complainant also submitted two driving
licences in support of his stated identity, one of which was still valid and had been issued in
Dubai, while the other was an expired licence issued in the Russian Federation.
2.5
On 26 August 2013, the Swedish Migration Agency rejected the asylum applications
of the complainant and his family members and decided to expel them to the Russian
Federation. It found that the complainant’s asylum account was neither credible nor
sufficient to consider him in need of international protection. In particular, the Migration
Agency questioned the complainant’s claim that, upon return to the Russian Federation, he
would risk treatment contrary to article 1 of the Convention at the hands of Ramzan
Kadyrov’s forces. It rejected the complainant’s claim that his adherence to Wahhabism
gave rise to a need to grant international protection. Furthermore, it questioned his account
that the Egyptian authorities, who would have arrested his father at the request of the
Chechen authorities, would have sent him not to Chechnya but to Turkey. The Migration
Agency noted that the complainant had not submitted any written evidence of his father’s
activities in opposition to Akhmad Kadyrov. It found that nothing suggested that the
complainant was wanted or would be subjected to treatment constituting grounds for
international protection because of his father or his alleged religious affiliation.
1
2
The factual background has been prepared based on the submissions of the complainant and those of
the State party.