CAT/C/46/D/310/2007 favourable to be a Lebanese citizen or a stateless person from Lebanon at the time. Thus, it was a common strategy among Syrian Christian asylum seekers to pretend to be Lebanese. Moreover, he self-identified as Lebanese. After his criminal conviction in 1991, he was afraid of being returned to Syria because of his engagement in a Syria-hostile fraction of the Lebanese Forces. 5.3 The complainant submits that before his criminal conviction, he had contacted the Swedish police to submit an application for refugee status under the 1951 Geneva Convention. However, he was advised that such an application was unnecessary, since he already had a resident permit. 5.4 The complainant states that on arrival at Damascus airport in 1997, he was brought to a special interrogation room where he was forced to disclose that he had served a prison term in Sweden. 5.5 The complainant explains that the reason why he stated that he had raised his torture in Syria in 1997 only in his November 2004 application, was that the May 2003 application that his wife had lodged on his behalf had been prepared by a non-lawyer. Only after receiving funds from Amnesty International in Sweden, he was able to undergo a medical and psychiatric examination at the Centre for Treatment of Crisis and Trauma Victims in August 2004 and to have the judgment of the Syrian Supreme State Security Court translated into Swedish to substantiate his torture claims. 5.6 The complainant reiterates that the State party has failed to disclose how and from what sources it had obtained the information that he was not wanted in Syria and that no restrictions had been imposed on him. He doubts that the Syrian authorities would share such secret and security-related information with a foreign, non-allied State, and claims that the State party has received inaccurate information, from which it has drawn its own conclusions. 5.7 On admissibility, the complainant argues that he has substantiated his risk of being subjected to torture on return to Syria by presenting a copy of the judgment of the Supreme State Council of Syria as well as medical evidence in support of his claim. Prior to his expulsion in 1997, he had substantiated his fear of being tortured in Syria based on his activities during the Lebanese civil war, even if he was unable to provide any medical evidence. The Swedish prison authority did not provide for free medical examinations of torture victims and his limited means as a prisoner did not allow him to arrange for a private examination. He concludes that his communication must be declared admissible under article 22, paragraph 2, of the Convention as being sufficiently substantiated. 5.8 On substance, the complainant argues that the State party has conceded that the human rights situation in Syria remained problematic. He submits several human rights reports to show that torture is frequently used by security agencies, especially in relation to security-related crimes and with regard to persons opposed to the Baath regime and to Syrian interests abroad. The State party was aware of his involvement in the Lebanese civil war; it was therefore foreseeable in 1997 that he would be arrested, detained, interrogated and tortured by the Syrian security service. 5.9 He claims that he continues to be personally at risk of being tortured in Syria. Even assuming that he had not violated any restrictions and that he would only be taken into preventive detention and referred to investigation for 10 to 14 days, as claimed by the State party, it would be more or less inevitable that he would be tortured again. The security service would have a special interest in him after his long absence from Syria and, notwithstanding the fact that he had served his Syrian prison sentence, would continue to consider him a security risk and a State enemy. 10