CAT/C/34/D/233/2003** Page 30 12.20 The State party refers the Committee to the recent decision of the Grand Chamber of the European Court on Human Rights, on 4 February 2005, in the case of Mamatkulov et al. v. Turkey. This case concerned the applicants’ extradition in March 1999 to Uzbekistan under a bilateral treaty with Turkey. Both applicants had been suspected of homicide, causing injuries to others by the explosion of a bomb in Uzbekistan and an attempted terrorist attack on the President of Uzbekistan. Following their extradition, they were found guilty of various offences and sentenced to twenty and eleven years’ imprisonment respectively. 12.21 Before the European Court, the applicants claimed that Turkey had violated inter alia article 3 of the European Convention. In defence, Turkey invoked assurances concerning the two applicants given by the Uzbek authorities. According to those assurances, which were provided by the public prosecutor of the Republic of Uzbekistan, the applicants would not be subjected to acts of torture or sentenced to capital punishment. The assurances also contained the information that Uzbekistan was a party to the Convention against Torture and accepted and reaffirmed its obligation to comply with the requirements of the provisions of the Convention “as regards both Turkey and the international community as a whole”. Officials from the Turkish embassy in Tashkent had visited the applicants in their respective places of detention in October 2001. The y were reportedly in good health and had not complained about their prison conditions. Turkey also invoked medical certificates drawn up by military doctors in the prisons where the applicants were held. 12.22 The State party observes that the European Court assessed the existence of the risk primarily with reference to those facts which were known or ought to have been known to the State party at the time of the extradition, with information coming to light subsequent to the extradition potentially being of value in confirming or refuting the appreciation that had been made by the State party of the well- foundedness or otherwise of a complainant’s fears. The Court concluded that it had to assess Turkey’s responsibility under article 3 by reference to the situation that obtained on the date of the applicants’ extradition, i.e. on 27 March 1999. While taking note of reports of international human-rights organisations denouncing an administrative practice of torture and other forms of ill-treatment of political dissidents and the Uzbek regime’s repressive policy towards such dissidents, the Court furthermore stated that, although those findings described the general situation in Uzbekistan, they did not support the specific allegations made by the applicants in the case and required corroboration by other evidence. Against the background of the assurances obtained by Turkey and the medical reports from the doctors in the Uzbek prisons in which the applicants were held, the Court found that it was not able to conclude that substantial grounds existed at the relevant date for believing that the applicants faced a real risk of treatment proscribed by article 3 of the European Convention. 12.23 The State party invites the Committee to adopt the same approach. It points out that assurances similar to those in the case before the European Court were indeed obtained by the Swedish Government in the instant case. Although the guarantees given in this case did not refer to Egypt’s obligations under the Convention against Torture, this is of no particular consequence since Egypt, like Uzbekistan, is in fact bound by the Convention. It is doubtful whether the value of assurances should be considered to be increased simply because they include a reference to a state’s human rights obligations. The important factor must be that the State in issue has actually undertaken to abide by the provisions of a human rights convention by becoming party to it. The fact that Egypt was a party to the Convention against Torture