CCPR/C/126/D/2346/2014 aware of the conflicts that led his father to flee Afghanistan. He assumed that his father had been killed by the Taliban because they were responsible for many incidents in Afghanistan. The author could not go to Afghanistan, because the country was at war and because his father had been killed. 2.5 The author further stated that he had applied for asylum in Denmark because of a conflict that had emerged in the Islamic Republic of Iran and because one of his friends had told him to go to Denmark. The conflict had emerged about four months before the author’s departure from the Islamic Republic of Iran when one of his colleagues had been stabbed to death with a knife during a lunch break in which the author was the only person at the workplace. The police and the victim’s family had come to the author’s home because they believed that he had killed his colleague. The author stated on that occasion that he did not fear being deported to Afghanistan, but he feared being arrested, imprisoned and executed in the Islamic Republic of Iran. 2.6 On 29 October 2012, the Danish Immigration Service rejected the author’s asylum application pursuant to section 7 of the Danish Aliens Act. 2.7 At the Refugee Appeals Board hearing on 6 February 2013, the author stated that he had discovered the dead body of a colleague who had been killed at his workplace in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The author’s employer had turned up and had called the police. Two hours later, the police had come to the author’s home with an arrest warrant. The author’s family had then decided that he should leave the country. 2.8 The author also stated that his father had been deported from the Islamic Republic of Iran to Afghanistan by the Iranian authorities four years earlier. Following his deportation, the author’s father had lived in Afghanistan for two and a half to three months. The author also stated that he had had contact with his paternal uncle in the Islamic Republic of Iran a few months previously, who told him that the author’s father had been killed by a stepbrother because of an inheritance dispute. The author stated that he feared that he would be in danger in Afghanistan, because his father was killed despite having lived in hiding. According to the author, the person who had killed his father would feel in danger if the author travelled to Afghanistan and would therefore also kill him. 2.9 On 6 February 2013, the Refugee Appeals Board upheld the refusal of the Danish Immigration Service to grant asylum. The Board established that the author was an ethnic Hazara, a Shia Muslim and an Afghan national. He was born and raised in the Islamic Republic of Iran and he was not a member of any political or religious association or organization, nor was he politically active in any other way. The Board found that it could not accept the author’s statements as facts. In that connection, the Board took into account that the author had given inconsistent and elaborate statements on his main grounds for seeking asylum. The Board concluded therefore that the author’s statements appeared to have been fabricated for the occasion in their entirety. For that reason, the Board found that the author had failed to substantiate his claim that he would be at specific and individual risk of persecution or abuse falling within section 7 of the Aliens Act in the event of his removal to Afghanistan. 2.10 By letter of 11 December 2013, the Danish Refugee Council requested the Refugee Appeals Board to reopen the author’s asylum proceedings, referring to his conversion to Christianity after the Board’s decision of 6 February 2013 and to the documentation produced by the author which showed that he was an Iranian national. According to the Council, the author had stated when interviewed by them on 10 December 2013 that he had grown up in a Muslim family and culture without meeting any Christians. He had first read the Bible during his stay in Greece when he had met some friends who went to church, and he felt that Christians acted according to what was written in the Bible, whereas Muslims did not behave according to what was written in the Koran. He had therefore decided to convert to Christianity. The author had started attending services at the free evangelical Kronborgvejens Church Centre in June 2013 and he had been baptized in that church on 13 October 2013. The author added that he now went to church every Sunday, that he prayed alone or with friends and that he read the Bible in Farsi twice a week. The author explained that he feared being killed upon his return to the Islamic Republic of Iran or if he travelled to Afghanistan because he had converted to Christianity. He had not therefore told his family about his 3

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