CAT/C/55/D/571/2013 4.8 The State party referred to the Appeals Board’s decision of 20 February 2014 in response to the complainant’s request of 20 November 2013 to reopen the asylum proceedings. It submits that the complainant explained that the inconsistencies between the statements made by him and his spouse were due to the interpretation problems at the asylum interviews because they were assigned an Iranian interpreter, who spoke Farsi, and not an Afghan interpreter, who would have understood Dari. The complainant alleged that the interpreter had not understood ordinary everyday words and that the interpreter had told them that it would harm their asylum case to bring up that issue. The police dismissed the complainant’s reservations about the inconsistencies in the interpretation. At the Appeals Board hearing, the complainant and his spouse had therefore not been able to account for the misunderstandings. According to the State party, the complainant stated that both he and his spouse were uneducated people and that their inability to explain about various circumstances actually showed that they had not invented and coordinated a mendacious story, but that they were traumatized refugees who were made nervous by the intense interrogation that they had been subjected to. The complainant added that it was well established that the Taliban often kidnapped the sons of wealthy families and demanded a ransom;9 he considered the Board’s examination of the case inadequate and said that his and his spouse’s honesty had been unfairly impugned. In his letter dated 26 November 2013, the complainant included additional information that he had been examined by a doctor and a psychologist, who had confirmed that he had been subjected to torture in Afghanistan. 4.9 The State party submits that, with his letter of 27 November 2013, the complainant forwarded a transcript of his medical records, from which it appeared that he had told the doctor that he had been subjected to torture, having twice been detained by the Taliban, and that, during his detention, he had been burnt with cigarettes, beaten with electric cables, burnt with metal and raped. The complainant had shown the doctor the scars on his body, and the doctor considered it likely that the pain experienced by the complainant was due to torture and previous lashings on his back and that he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. The Board still found no basis for re-opening the asylum proceedings. It emphasized that no substantial new information had been added to the complainant’s case, compared with the information that was made available at the original Board hearing on 13 January 2012 or at the time of the Board’s refusal of 19 July 2013 to re-open the proceedings. 4.10 Concerning the complainant’s allegations of interpretation problems during the asylum interviews, the State party submits that the Appeals Board had observed that it appeared from the reports on the asylum interviews with the Danish Immigration Service on 10 and 11 May 2011, respectively, signed by both the complainant and his spouse, that they had been interviewed in Dari, their mother tongue. According to the reports, the complainant and his spouse had reviewed the reports with the interpreter and had the opportunity to make additions and comments. It also appeared that both the complainant and his spouse had stated that there were no problems with the interpretation. The State party points out that the Board observed that the fact that the complainant had allegedly told the police on a later occasion that there had been interpretation problems during the asylum interviews could not lead to a different result. The Board also observed that, at the hearing, the complainant and his spouse did not draw the Board’s attention to the alleged interpretation problems during the previous proceedings.10 9 10 8 The complainant refers to the findings of the Danish Afghanistan Committee in that regard. According to the State party, the Appeals Board used a different interpreter from the ones used for the interviews with the Danish Immigration Service.