OTHMAN (ABU QATADA) v. THE UNITED KINGDOM JUDGMENT 47 a breach of Article 3 as Azerbaijan had not supplied the assurances to the Committee in order for the Committee to perform its own independent assessment of their satisfactoriness or otherwise, nor had it detailed with sufficient specificity the monitoring undertaken and the steps taken to ensure that it was objective, impartial and sufficiently trustworthy. C. Alzery v. Sweden 151. In Mohammed Alzery v. Sweden, CCPR/C/88/D/1416/2005, 10 November 2006, the United Nations Human Rights Committee considered the removal of an Egyptian national to Egypt by Sweden, pursuant to diplomatic assurances that had been obtained from the Egyptian government. On the merits of the case, the Committee found : “11.3 .... The existence of diplomatic assurances, their content and the existence and implementation of enforcement mechanisms are all factual elements relevant to the overall determination of whether, in fact, a real risk of proscribed ill-treatment exists. ... 11.5 The Committee notes that the assurances procured contained no mechanism for monitoring of their enforcement. Nor were any arrangements made outside the text of the assurances themselves which would have provided for effective implementation. The visits by the State party’s ambassador and staff commenced five weeks after the return, neglecting altogether a period of maximum exposure to risk of harm. The mechanics of the visits that did take place, moreover, failed to conform to key aspects of international good practice by not insisting on private access to the detainee and inclusion of appropriate medical and forensic expertise, even after substantial allegations of ill-treatment emerged. In light of these factors, the State party has not shown that the diplomatic assurances procured were in fact sufficient in the present case to eliminate the risk of ill-treatment to a level consistent with the requirements of article 7 of the Covenant. The author’s expulsion thus amounted to a violation of article 7 of the Covenant.” D. Canadian case law 1. Suresh 152. In Suresh v. Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) [2002] 1 SCR 3, the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously found that Canadian and international law did not permit deportation where on the evidence there was a substantial risk of torture. It did not find that in all cases deportation would be unconstitutional (and a refugee’s rights could be balanced against the threat he or she posed) but the balance would usually come down against expelling the refugee. The court also made the following

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