CAT/C/34/D/233/2003** Page 24 complainant is at risk of external pressure in the event of an insistence on an independent investigation. In fact, the complainant, through his relatives, has repeatedly made known his desire for the fullest possible defence of his interests. 11.12 Counsel goes on to refer to relevant case law in national jurisdictions. In the case of Mr. Bilasi- Ashri, the Egyptian government refused to accept a detailed set of assurances, including post-return monitoring, requested by the Austrian Minister of Justice following a decision to that effect by an Austrian court of appeal. In the case of Ahmed Zakaev, a British extradition court found that a real risk of torture was not discounted by assurances given in open court by a Russian deputy minister overseeing prisons. Counsel argues that a similarly rigorous approach, with effective protection provided by the legal system, ought to have been followed in the complainant’s case. 11.13 Counsel expands on the earlier reference to involvement of the United States of America in the complainant’s case in paragraph 10.2, supra, referring to a book entitled “Chain of Command” by Seymour Hersh. This contended that “the Bromma action” (referring to the airport from which the complainant was removed) was carried out by members of the Special Access Program of the United States Department of Defense who were engaged in returning terrorist suspects to their countries of origin utilising “unconventional methods”. It is said that the complainant’s removal was one of the first operations carried out under this program and described by an operative involved as “one of the less successful ones”. In counsel’s view, this third State involvement at the removal stage in an anti-terrorism context should have confirmed what the State party already knew from its knowledge of the common use of torture in Egypt and the complainant’s particular vulnerability, that is, that a real risk of torture existed at the time of his removal, in breach of article 3. 11.14 By further letter of 16 November 2004, counsel provided a copy of a Human Rights Watch report to the Committee entitled “Recent Concerns regarding the Growing Use of Diplomatic Assurances as an Alleged Safeguard against Torture”. The report surveys recent examples of State practice in the area of diplomatic assurances by Germany, the United States of America, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Canada. The report argues that such assurances are increasingly viewed as a way of escaping the absolute character of nonrefoulement obligations, and are expanding from the anti-terrorism context into the area of refugee claims. It contends that assurances tend to be sought only from countries where torture is a serious and systematic problem, which thus acknowledges the real risk of torture presented in such cases. 11.15 In the light of national experience, the report concludes that assurances are not an adequate safeguard for a variety of reasons. Human rights protection is not amenable to diplomacy, with its tendency to untransparent process and to place the State to State relationship as the primary consideration. Such assurances amount to trusting a systematic abuser who otherwise cannot be trusted to abide by its international obligations. It also amounts to giving a systematic abuser a “pass” with respect to an individual case when torture is otherwise widespread. Finally, the effectiveness of post-return monitoring is limited by the undetectability of much professionally- inflicted torture, the absence of medical expertise from typical monitoring arrangements, the unwillingness of torture victims to speak out for fear of retribution, and the unwillingness of either the sending State or the receiving State to accept any responsibility for exposing an individual to torture.