CAT/C/51/D/429/2010 country. The UNHCR guidelines thus have no decisive influence in themselves. Nevertheless, the State party maintains that recommendations and background material from UNHCR formed a crucial element of the Board’s processing of the case and were accorded material importance. The State party maintains that such understanding is in line with the views of the European Court.9 It further refers to the Committee’s own practice that the existence of a pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights in a country does not as such constitute sufficient reason for determining that a particular person would be in danger of being subjected to torture on return to that country; additional grounds must be adduced to show that the individual concerned would be personally at risk. Similarly, the absence of a consistent pattern of flagrant violations of human rights does not mean that a person cannot be considered to be in danger to be subjected to torture in his or her specific circumstances. It further points out that in the case of N.A. v. the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the European Court established that there was no general risk of treatment contrary to article 3 to all Tamils returning to Sri Lanka10 and notes that the above decision was taken before the decision of the Board of 19 May 2010 in the complainant’s case. 6.2 The State party further maintains that the complainant must establish that there are substantial grounds for believing that she would be in danger of torture were she to be expelled at present, namely at the time of the assessment of the case by the Committee. The State party maintains that the present case is clearly distinguishable from the case of N.A. v. the United Kingdom, since in that case the applicant had left Sri Lanka clandestinely after being arrested and detained by the army on six different occasions, on at least one occasion he had been ill-treated and scarred and he had been photographed and his fingerprints taken. 6.3 Regarding the complainant’s allegation that there were translation errors in her application form, she had submitted previously to the authorities that there had been one error, namely the year of the death of her nephew had been translated mistakenly. The Board took that into consideration. No other typing mistakes or erroneous translation had been detected. In addition the complainant had sent a four-page letter to the Danish Immigration Service, giving a thorough account of her motive for asylum and therefore the State party considers it unlikely that she had tried to suppress information, but on the contrary had tried to adduce information to the case. 6.4 Regarding the torture examination, the State party refers to its previous observations, namely that the incident when she had been detained and beaten and her teeth were knocked out is a central element of her application and that the authorities found it unlikely that she had forgotten to mention it in her initial application, but only remembered about it in November 2009, more than six months later. The State party further reiterates the reasoning of the Board for rejecting the complainant’s application (see paragraph 4.4 above). Complainant’s further information 7. On 20 July 2011, the complainant made reference to the Committee’s jurisprudence in communication 91/1997, A. v. the Netherlands, where the complainant also had scars from past torture and the Committee found that the State party had failed to explain why his claims were considered insufficiently substantial as to warrant a medical examination.11 9 10 11 8 The State party made reference to the European Court cases N.A. v. the United Kingdom, judgment of 17 July 2008 and F.H. v. Sweden, appl. No. 32621/06, judgment of 20 January 2009. Ibid. Communication No. 91/1997, A.v. Netherlands, Views of 13 November 1998, para. 6.6.

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