CAT/C/49/D/425/2010 The facts as presented by the complainant 2.1 In 1998, after having doubts about the circumstances of his father’s death, which had occurred in 1986, the complainant wrote a letter to the Secretary-General of the Ministry of Defence of Algeria requesting that the context of his father’s death be investigated. His father was a commander in the secret services and deputy director of the Department of Intelligence and Security, as well as a former military attaché at the embassy in Damascus. During a New Year’s celebration with his former colleagues from military school (the complainant had left before completing his studies), he learned that his father had been assassinated. According to the information from one of his friends, who is in the army, his father died at the military psychiatric hospital after a dispute with the military doctor, during which the complainant’s father reportedly revealed military secrets. The military doctor, on instruction by the Ministry of Defence, gave him a strong tranquilizer which led to heart failure. In letters to the President sent on 11 February and 5 May 2005, the complainant requested that the President open an investigation into his father’s death. After the complainant’s second letter, two individuals, whom a friend from the army identified as military security agents, came to his house during his absence. In December 2005, the complainant wrote a third letter to the President, in which he strongly criticized the authorities and the army, denouncing the army and holding it responsible for two massacres of the civilian population, questioning the way former President Boudiaf had been assassinated and revealing the names of the persons responsible for the attack on a commuter train (RER) in Paris. On 15 December 2005, the complainant was arrested and his passport was confiscated. Over the course of five days, he was beaten and threatened with death, and officials urinated on him. The complainant was held for 20 days; before his liberation on 4 January 2006, he was forced, under the threat of death, to sign a document in which he acknowledged that he had been part of an Islamist group acting in Algiers. Nevertheless, he was never charged with any crime and could travel freely, except that he had to report on a weekly basis to the police station. After he was freed, the complainant’s wife took pictures of his bruises, which were shown to the Swedish immigration authorities. 2.2 After his old passport had been confiscated on 15 December 2005, the complainant obtained a new one from an official who had been bribed for that purpose. In 2007, the complainant visited his mother in Egypt. On 20 March 2008, the police station at which the complainant needed to report on a weekly basis following his release requested that he go to the station with his passport. Suspecting that the secret services were continuing to look for him, the complainant decided to make his escape. Accordingly, on 27 March 2008, the complainant arrived in Sweden, where he made a request for asylum. Four days later, his wife’s passport was confiscated in Algeria, and for one year after his departure she received regular visits from individuals in plain clothes said to be searching for the complainant and threatening her. 2.3 On 17 December 2009, the immigration services rejected the complainant’s request for asylum, on the ground that the documents he had submitted did not sufficiently prove that he had been a victim of torture in the past. The complainant notes that he had been warned by the secret services not to speak to anybody about his detention and not to get any medical certificate. The immigration services recognized that he had written several letters to the President, but they considered that this would not constitute a real risk of torture on his return. The Swedish authorities also noted that the complainant decided to act only after delays of 12 and 19 years following the death of his father. The complainant notes that he was only 20 when his father died and was serving in the army at that time. He explains that he decided to inquire into his father’s death when he quit the military and after having received information from his friends in 2005. The Swedish immigration services considered that the events leading to his father’s death and the allegation that the complainant would be searched for, in reprisal for the letters he had written to the President, were not credible. They also noted that, in 2007, the complainant had already travelled to 3