- 118 - The facts as submitted 2.1 The complainant is a widow with two minor children, all Georgian citizens of Mengrel ethnic origin. In Georgia she and her deceased husband, M.B., were working for former Georgian President Gamsakhurdia (also a Mengrel) and his political party, the Zwiadists, and for the Mengrel cause in Georgia. The complainant has been a member of the Zwiadists since mid-1992, and started nursing wounded Zwiadists after she became a nurse in 1993. Her husband and her father were fighting for the Mengrel partisan army. 2.2 On 19 November 1993, the complainant was arrested together with 30 other women, among them her mother, while participating in an illegal demonstration of about 1,500 persons in her home city Zugditi, against the Government of President Shevardnadze. All the arrested women received a collective death sentence. The prison guards beat them frequently, and five of the women were executed. Prison guards raped two of her co-prisoners before they executed them. One of the guards sexually mistreated and raped the complainant, and she expected to be killed afterwards like her co-prisoners. However, shortly afterwards, on 31 December 1993, Mengrel partisans attacked the Zugditi prison and liberated all political prisoners. The complainant’s father was among the attacking partisans. After being released, the complainant moved with her family to Gegetjkori. Meanwhile, the complainant’s husband lived in a Mengrel partisan camp in the forest nearby. On 18 August 1994 he was wounded and captured by the Georgian army, and thereafter executed. 2.3 On 3 February 1996, the complainant, her two children and her mother left Georgia illegally, by boat to Poland and then, hidden in a truck, to Denmark. They arrived in Denmark on 12 February 1996. They went immediately to the police and requested asylum. A year later, the complainant’s father also arrived in Denmark and requested asylum, after a long stay at a hospital in the Caucasus Mountains. He was not aware that his family was already residing in Denmark. 2.4 The Danish Immigration Service rejected the complainant’s application for asylum on 22 May 1998. On 31 July 1998 her then counsel appealed to the Refugee Board. The application was rejected on 4 August 1998, and the complainant was ordered to leave Denmark on 19 August 1998. Two applications to reopen the complainant’s case, submitted on 17 August and on 29 October 1998/1 December 1998, were refused by the Refugee Board on 23 September 1998 and 26 January 1999, respectively. 2.5 In its decision of 4 August 1998 the Board cited as grounds for the rejection that the attack on the prison on 31 December 1993, if it really happened, would have been mentioned in the background material available on Georgia, and that the complainant’s father would have mentioned this attack in his own application for asylum, which he did not do. Even if it accepted the complainant’s story, the Board did not consider that the complainant would be persecuted if she returned to Georgia. It referred to information received from UNHCR stating that partisans of President Gamsakhurdia are not persecuted only because they supported him. 2.6 In the application of 29 October 1998, counsel requested a reopening of the complainant’s asylum case in the light of new information he had received. This information consisted of two new documents, including a death certificate for the husband and a declaration