CAT/C/35/D/238/2003 Page 11 confusion resulted from a mistranslation. The State party argued that the confusion between a single political party (the SPPO) and a 14-party coalition (the SEPDC) could not simply be attributed to problems of translation. 9.5 The State party dismissed the credibility of the complainant’s claims on the basis of fundamental contradictions between the complainant’s claims and those of his mother who was interviewed by the Norwegian Embassy in Ethiopia. After the complainant learned that his mother had informed the Norwegian authorities of his prior imprisonment for his membership of the EPRP, he claimed to have been arrested several times, a fact which he had not previously mentioned. Further discrepancies between his account and that of his mother included the identity of his siblings and his places of residence at different stages in his life, which the State party regarded as undermining the complainant’s credibility further. 9.6 The State party noted that in his asylum interview, the complainant had stated that he had never been subjected to any kind of physical torture, but that he had been threatened in a way akin to psychological torture. Two years later, however, when requesting the annulment of the Ministry of Justice’s negative decision concerning his asylum claim, he claimed to have been subjected to torture in the form of baton blows to his head. The State party maintained that the late submission of such a crucial fact further undermined the credibility of the complainant’s claims. It further argued that his contraction of epilepsy was not, contrary to the arguments advanced by the complainant, a result of the torture he allegedly suffered, but that it more likely emerged from his infection with a tapeworm. The State party finally argued that the contradictions and inconsistencies in the complainant’s story cannot, as maintained by the complainant, be reasonably attributed to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), as the complainant’s allegation to be suffering from PTSD had been submitted late and had not been substantiated beyond a declaration by a nurse purely based on the complainant’s own account. 9.7 The State party did not regard the support letter from the EPRP’s Norwegian group, certifying that the complainant was a victim of imprisonment and political persecution in Ethiopia, as sufficient evidence for the claim that the complainant had been politically active in his home country or that he was viewed with suspicion by the authorities. In the State party’s experience, exile organisations had a tendency routinely to issue “confirmations” to country people requesting them. The State party contended that EPRP’s Norwegian section had only limited knowledge of the complainant’s case. 9.8 In the State party’s view, accepting that complete accuracy is seldom to be expected from potential victims of torture, the credibility of the complainant’s claim was nonetheless comprehensively undermined by the evident contradictions and inconsistencies set out. Moreover, even if the complainant’s account of his political persecution in the past had been true, given the current situation in Ethiopia, there was no basis for holding that he would now be of particular interest to the Ethiopian authorities. The State party therefore concluded that the assessment of the available information and material made by the Norwegian authorities was correct, and that those assessments warranted the conclusion that there were no substantial grounds for believing that the complainant would be at a personal and real risk of being subjected to torture or other ill-treatment if returned to Ethiopia. The complainant’s comments on the State party’s submissions: