CAT/C/47/D/327/2007
disorders, including post-traumatic stress, together with the results of a polygraph test
carried out by police in the State party indicating that his torture allegations were plausible.
With regard to the real and personal risk of torture if he were extradited, the Committee
notes that the complainant claimed to run a high risk of being tortured given that he would
be sent back to the prison from which he had escaped and in which he had allegedly been
threatened with torture by officers from the police station responsible for his arrest in 1998.
The complainant contested the reliability of the diplomatic assurances, on the one hand
because they came from a country in which torture was said to be widespread or its practice
denied by the authorities, and on the other hand because it was unlikely that the
complainant would not be subject to questioning by the police for the crime of which he
was accused. With regard to the follow-up to the diplomatic assurances, the Committee
notes that, after he was extradited, the complainant made allegations of having been
tortured that are contested by the State party. The Committee also notes that the national
courts of the State party considered that the risk the complainant ran of being tortured in
prison would be minimal and that the complainant had failed to establish that he would be
questioned by the police. The Committee notes the State party’s assertion that the risk of
torture was mitigated by the diplomatic assurances, whose worth had been assessed in
consideration of the fact that a mechanism would be put in place to monitor the
complainant’s situation through regular visits by consular staff. That assertion is challenged
by the complainant, who maintains that from 17 to 20 August 2007 the State party made no
enquiries as to his safety.
14.4 The Committee concludes that the main issue is to determine whether, at the time
the extradition took place, the complainant ran a foreseeable, real and personal risk of
torture. Article 3 of the Convention obliges the State that decides whether or not to
extradite a person under its jurisdiction to another State to take all necessary steps to
prevent torture from occurring. This obligation means that it has the duty to examine
carefully and take into account all existing circumstances that may reasonably be
considered to indicate a risk of torture as previously defined. The standards that must be
met to ensure prevention are still more stringent when the State decides to request
diplomatic assurances before proceeding with extradition (or any other type of handover),
given that such a request demonstrates that the extraditing State harbours concerns about
the treatment that may be reserved for the extradited person in the destination country. Even
when the evidence does not clearly indicate the existence of a risk of such nature, the
circumstances of the case may demonstrate that there is a reasonable doubt that the
receiving State would comply with the obligation to prevent torture under articles 1 and 2
of the Convention. In the instant case it is uncontested that the complainant had been
previously subjected to torture. In these circumstances, the Committee must determine
whether the diplomatic assurances in the specific case were of a nature to eliminate all
reasonable doubt that the complainant would be subjected to torture upon his return. In this
context the Committee must take into account whether the obtained diplomatic assurances
include follow-up procedures that would guarantee their effectiveness.
14.5 In this case, the Committee is of the view that the State party did not take into
account, before deciding on extradition, all of the circumstances indicating that the
complainant ran a foreseeable, real and personal risk of torture. First, the State party gave
no consideration to the fact that the complainant would be sent to the same prison in which
a guard had died during the complainant’s escape years before, and that the guard’s death
too was a subject of the extradition request. Second, the agreed system of diplomatic
assurances was not carefully enough designed to effectively prevent torture. The diplomatic
and consular authorities of the State party were not given due notice of the complainant’s
extradition and not informed of the need to stay in close and continuous contact with him
from the moment he was handed over. In this case the diplomatic assurances and the
foreseen consular visits failed to anticipate the likelihood that the complainant had the
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