CCPR/C/117/D/2469/2014 Annex I Joint opinion of Committee members Yuval Shany, Yuji Iwasawa, Sir Nigel Rodley and Konstantin Vardzelashvili (dissenting) 1. We regret that we are unable to join the majority on the Committee in finding that, in deciding to deport the author, Denmark would, if it implemented the decision, violate its obligations under article 7 of the Covenant. 2. In paragraph 9.7. of the Views, the Committee recalls that “important weight should be given to the assessment conducted by the States parties’ authorities, unless it is found that the evaluation was clearly arbitrary or amounted to a denial of justice, and that it is generally for the organs of States parties to the Covenant to review or evaluate facts and evidence in order to determine whether such a risk exists”. Despite this, the majority of the Committee engaged in what appears to us to be an independent analysis of the credibility of the author, which involved an evaluation of the discrepancies in his statements and their significance (“the author made numerous and convincing attempts to try and clarify discrepancies in dates (whether he terminated his employment on 1 May, 20 May or 31 May 2011), which cannot in and of themselves be considered to vitiate the whole credibility of his allegations” (para. 9.9); “the refugee appeals board based its decision to reject the author’s asylum claim merely on inconsistencies that are not central to the general claim made by the author as a former interpreter for the United States forces in Afghanistan” (para. 9.11)). 3. We find the willingness of the Committee to evaluate de novo the credibility of the author’s statements and to form a different conclusion about them than the refugee appeals board to run contrary to the “clearly arbitrary or denial of justice” standard articulated in paragraph 9.7 of the Views, and to past Views of the Committee that emphasized that it is not “a fourth instance competent to re-evaluate findings of fact”.a 4. In past cases in which the decision of State organs to deport an individual was found by the Committee to run contrary to the Covenant, the Committee sought to base its position on inadequacies in the domestic decision-making process, such as failure to properly take into account available evidence or the specific rights of the author under the Covenant,b serious procedural flaws in the conduct of the domestic review proceedingsc or the inability of the State party to provide a reasonable justification for its decision.d In the present case, however, the Committee’s Views do not point to a failure to consider an important piece of information, any procedural flaw or lack of motivation of the decision to deport. Instead, the majority on the Committee appears to have formed an independent opinion on the credibility of the author, without having the benefit of interviewing him directly and without adequately explaining why the multiple inconsistencies in his statements concerning key parts in his story (the dates in which the events giving rise to the alleged risk took place) and the serious doubts about the authenticity of the documents he a b c d See, for example, communication No. 1138/2002, Arenz et al v. Germany, Views adopted on 24 March 2004, para. 8.6. See, for example, communication No. 1544/2007, Hamida v. Canada, Views adopted on 18 March 2010, paras. 8.4 to 8.6. See, for example, communication No. 1908/2009, X. v. Republic of Korea, Views adopted on 25 March 2014, para. 11.5. See, for example, communication No. 1222/2003, Byahuranga v. Denmark, Views adopted on 1 November 2004, para. 11.3 and 11.4. 15