CAT/C/35/D/237/2003 Page 9 admissibility. Accordingly, the Committee considers the complaint admissible and proceeds to its consideration of the merits. 6.2 The issue before the Committee is whether the removal of the complainant and her family to El Salvador would violate the State party’s obligation under article 3 of the Convention not to expel or to return a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he or she would be in danger of being subjected to torture. 6.3 The Committee must evaluate whether there are substantial grounds for believing that the complainant would be personally in danger of being subjected to torture upon return to El Salvador. In assessing this risk, the Committee must take into account all relevant considerations, pursuant to article 3, paragraph 2, of the Convention, including the existence of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights. However, the Committee recalls that the aim of such determination is to establish whether the individual concerned would be personally at risk of being subjected to torture in the country to which he or she would return. It follows that the existence of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights on a country does not as such constitute a sufficient ground for determining that a particular person would be in danger of being subjected to torture upon his or her return to that country; there must be additional grounds to show that the individual concerned would be personally at risk. Similarly, the absence of a consistent pattern of gross violations of human rights does not mean that a person cannot be considered to be in danger of being subjected to torture in his or her specific circumstances. 6.4 The Committee observes that the acts of torture that the complainant allegedly suffered occurred in 1989 and 1991, when El Salvador was mired in internal armed conflict, and when there was a pattern of massive and gross human rights violations in the country. The Committee notes that the general situation of El Salvador has changed since the Peace Accords came into effect in 1992. The FMLN, formerly a guerilla group, is now a political party which won the majority of seats in the 2003 parliamentary elections. The Committee has not been persuaded that the incidents that concerned the complainant in 2000 and 2003 were linked in any way to her previous political activities or those of her husband, and considers that the complainant has failed to prove sufficiently that those incidents be attributable to state agents or to groups acting on behalf of or under the effective control of state agents. Notwithstanding the occurrence of violence and confrontation in El Salvador, the Committee is not persuaded that the complainant or any members of her family would face a real, personal, and foreseeable risk of torture if deported from Sweden. 7. In the light of the above, the Committee against Torture, acting under article 22, paragraph 7 of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, concludes that the decision of the State Party to return the complainant and her family to El Salvador would not constitute a breach of article 3 of the Convention. [Adopted in English, French, Russian and Spanish, the English text being the original version. Subsequently to be issued also in Arabic and Chinese as part of the Committee’s annual report to the General Assembly.] -----