CAT/C/56/D/545/2013 Facts as presented by the complainant 2.1 The complainant asserts that he was persecuted by the National Secret Service (NSS) of Armenia because of his political views, his advocacy activities in support of opponents of the political regime, and his former employment with NSS. He claims that he was beaten several times in the street by strangers who accused him of collaborating with the opposition and failing to obey law enforcement authorities. The complainant claims that he underwent surgery as a result of one such attack, and that on another occasion he was beaten so brutally that 16 of his teeth were knocked out. He maintains that NSS agents tortured and harassed him several times in order to keep him away from the opposition, fearing that he would use inside information about NSS operations, intelligence-gathering methods and undercover agents against the Armenian authorities. 2.2 The complainant contends that NSS employees continue to be monitored after separating from the organization and that NSS is undoubtedly aware of his reasons for coming to Switzerland. He claims that, while employed by NSS, he personally witnessed its agents subject many victims to unlawful detention, harassment and torture. Such acts included introducing a gun into the mouth of a victim, striking the heels of a victim’s feet with a stick, keeping a victim in a humid and dark underground cabin without food, and threatening a victim’s spouse and children. The complainant further alleges that most of those victims were innocent and were later released, but never disclosed what had happened to them out of fear. 2.3 The complainant alleges that he is considered a traitor by NSS because he sued the Armenian police for unlawful acts in 2008, after leaving the Service. He asserts that NSS discovered that in 2011 he had lodged an application before the European Court of Human Rights concerning a decision rendered by the Armenian courts. Thereafter, he was allegedly the target of a “new wave of threats and repressions (including physical harassment and offences)”. The complainant refers to the case of an unnamed school director whom NSS suspected of having been recruited by foreign secret service agencies during a five-month stay in the United States of America. The complainant alleges that, on the basis of that suspicion alone, NSS subjected the school director to psychological and physical harassment for seven or eight months, after which time he was released due to a lack of evidence. 2.4 On 29 May 2013, the Federal Office for Migration of Switzerland denied the complainant’s application for asylum. According to the decision, the Office found that the evidence the complainant had provided did not support his arguments; he was not credible; and he posed no threat to the Government of Armenia, because he had stated that he did not belong to an opposition party and did not have a public profile. Moreover, the complainant had stated that he had travelled to the Russian Federation three times in 2010 without experiencing harassment or other problems upon leaving or entering Armenia. He had also travelled to Georgia in 2011 without problem, and through the Yerevan airport to Switzerland without any difficulty in July 2011. Regarding a dental record indicating that several of the complainant’s teeth had been “restored”, the Office observed that the record did not state the cause of the dental problem, and did not explain what the restoration treatment had entailed. Similarly, the Office considered that an undated medical certificate attesting to an operation undergone by the complainant did not indicate the cause of the treatment and therefore did not support his allegations that he had been beaten. Moreover, the Office considered that a letter provided by the complainant, in which five Armenian individuals claimed that the complainant had been a victim of persecution, was a courtesy letter with low probative value. It further considered that the death certificate for the complainant’s father that he had also provided indicated that his father had died in an accident and not as a result of murder, as the complainant alleged. Concerning the letter from the European Court of Human Rights stating that the complainant had lodged an 3