CAT/C/58/D/600/2014 regard, the State party refers to the Committee’s general comment No. 1, in which it is stated that the Committee is not an appellate or judicial body and that it gives considerable weight to findings of fact that are made by the organs of the State party concerned.4 The State party therefore requests that the Committee accept that it has thoroughly assessed the complainant’s claims in its domestic proceedings and found that it does not owe the complainant protection obligations under the Convention. 4.5 The State party recalls that the complainant lodged an application for a protection visa on 28 May 2012. He was granted a bridging visa while his protection visa application was under consideration by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship. On 31 August 2012, the complainant’s protection visa application was refused. 4.6 The Department of Immigration and Citizenship interviewed the complainant (with the assistance of an interpreter) and also considered other relevant material, such as country information provided by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The decision maker who examined the complainant’s protection visa application evaluated the copies of character references that were filed with his application. Despite claiming to be a Hindu, he provided a reference from a parish priest of St. John de Brito’s Church in Batticaloa, Sri Lanka, dated 15 March 2012, indicating that the priest had known the complainant “for some years”. However, the decision maker determined that the priest did not appear to know the complainant personally, which called into question the integrity of the reference. After considering all the information available, the Department of Immigration and Citizenship was not satisfied that there were substantial grounds for believing that, as a necessary and foreseeable consequence of the complainant being removed to Sri Lanka, there was a real risk that he would suffer significant harm. 4.7 The complainant subsequently filed an application for an external merits review with the Refugee Review Tribunal. Such review is normally carried out by a special external review body that provides a full and independent review of decisions concerning protection visas. The complainant was present at the review hearing on 7 November 2012 and was represented by a registered migration officer. He was able to make oral submissions with the assistance of an interpreter. 4.8 After considering the available evidence, the Tribunal concluded that the complainant “was not providing evidence regarding events that he had actually participated in or witnessed. He was instead providing evidence from a script that he had learnt based on fabricated claims that he had used to try and strengthen his claim for refugee status”. The Tribunal considered that the evidence indicated that the claims were fabricated, including for the following reasons: (a) the death certificate provided by the complainant in respect of the woman who was allegedly killed in the September 2011 incident was not genuine. The Tribunal found that his answers to the questions about how his father had discovered who had been killed were circular and that his evidence about this was fabricated; (b) the complainant acknowledged that he had remained in Sri Lanka for almost four months after the alleged incident. He had initially said that he had been visited twice while in Sri Lanka: the first time being when three men came to his house late one evening; and the second time being when people in a white van attempted to abduct him; (c) when the Tribunal raised that four months was a long time to remain in Sri Lanka if he was being pursued by the Sri Lanka Army or authorities, the complainant said that he had been visited a third time before he left for Australia. 4 See, the Committee’s general comment No. 1 (1997) on the implementation of article 3 of the Convention in the context of article 22, para. 9. 5