CAT/C/54/D/540/2013 Turkey for a PKK camp located near Erbil in Iraq, where he received military training. Following his departure from Turkey, his father and an uncle, both PKK combatants, were killed in a clash with the Turkish armed forces in Mardin. Between 1993 and 1996, the complainant was involved in fighting. 2 Having been injured during an air raid by the Turkish army, 3 he was transferred to the United Nations-operated camp at Mahmur, in Iraq, where he continued to provide assistance and logistical support to the PKK. 2.2 In late 2004, the complainant was detained by the United States armed forces, who put pressure on him to join their ranks. Knowing that he could not return to Turkey, he eventually agreed. After a period of military training in Mosul, Iraq, he took part in fighting under the American armed forces, which used him as a human shield. 2.3 The complainant attached two medical reports, dated 13 October 2009 and 5 June 2012. The first report, issued by the University Hospital of Zurich, states that he had been seriously affected by war experiences in 2004 when fighting with the American army in Iraq. During that time, he was made to walk, totally unprotected, in front of American tanks and he witnessed suicide attacks on a daily basis, only narrowly escaping one such attack himself. He witnessed the death of 110 people in a single day and also lost his friends, who “melted” before his eyes in a bombing. The medical report concludes that the complainant exhibits symptoms of post -traumatic stress disorder. The second medical report, issued on 5 June 2012 by the psychosocial centre in Fribourg, reaches the same conclusion. 2.4 Finding himself in an unbearable situation, the complainant decided to leave Iraq and, to that end, contacted an uncle living in Istanbul, who enlisted and paid a smuggler with whom the complainant left Iraq overland on 1 September 2005. He travelled to Tehran, Amman and then Geneva under the name of Temel Karasu on a borrowed Turkish passport that he later returned to the smuggler. 2.5 The complainant arrived in Geneva on 21 September 2005. The next day, he applied for asylum at the registration centre in Basel, Switzerland. 2.6 Out of fear that he would have to admit to having killed human beings while fighting for the PKK, which is considered a “terrorist” movement by Turkey and the European Union, and because of his extremely fragile mental health, the complainant initially told the Swiss authorities that he had never received military training from the PKK and had merely performed various chores for the party at the camp in Iraq. 2.7 By decision of 2 March 2007, the Swiss Federal Office for Migration rejected the complainant’s application for asylum on the basis, inter alia, that his version of the events was implausible. The Office found that the account of his activities within the PKK was not credible and challenged his claim that he had not received even basic weapons training. The Office observed that thousands of persons had returned to Turkey without being systematically persecuted by the authorities, and the fact th at he had been a refugee in Iraq did not, in itself, entail a real risk of persecution were he to return to Turkey. On 5 April 2007, the complainant appealed the decision. 2.8 In its ruling of 13 January 2009, the Federal Administrative Tribunal rejected t he appeal, noting in particular that the complainant had left Turkey at the age of 11 and __________________ 2 3 GE.15-11115 The complainant attached photographs of himself in military uniform. Initially, he claimed he had never engaged in fighting or received military training. See paras. 2.6 and 2.8 of the present decision. The complainant attached a medical certificate dated 17 February 2009 and issued by a doctor in Fribourg, Switzerland, which states that X-rays revealed the “presence of foreign metallic objects in the posterior thorax and upper right arm. These foreign objects are entirely consistent with shrapnel.” 3/10