CAT/C/64/D/742/2016
necessary for his rehabilitation. According to the medical report of 14 December 2016, the
interruption of the specialized treatment and of the stable social environment provided by
his brother would put the complainant at risk of irreparable harm, as his depressive state
would worsen to such an extent that he would be likely to commit suicide. The Committee
further notes that this precarious situation endangering the life of the complainant would
leave him no reasonable choice but to seek protection elsewhere, exposing him to a risk of
chain refoulement to his home country.
8.8
Against this background, the Committee considers that the State party should have
ascertained whether appropriate rehabilitation services in Italy were actually available and
accessible to the complainant in order to satisfy his right to rehabilitation as a victim of
torture, and to seek assurances from the Italian authorities to ensure that the complainant
would have immediate and continuing access to such treatments until such time as he no
longer needed them. In the absence of any information from the State party suggesting that
such an assessment took place in the present case, and in view of the complainant’s health
situation, the Committee considers that the State party failed to sufficiently and individually
assess the complainant’s personal experience as a victim of torture and the foreseeable
consequences of forcibly returning him to Italy. The Committee therefore considers that, by
deporting the complainant to Italy, the State party would deprive him of his right to
rehabilitation, and that this situation would by itself amount, in the circumstances of the
complainant, to ill-treatment. Accordingly, forcibly returning the complainant to Italy
would constitute a breach of articles 14 and 16 of the Convention.
8.9
The Committee recalls that, according to its general comment No. 2, the obligation
to prevent ill-treatment overlaps with and is largely congruent with the obligation to prevent
torture and that, in practice, the definitional threshold between ill-treatment and torture is
often not clear. Experience demonstrates that the conditions that give rise to ill-treatment
frequently facilitate torture and therefore the measures required to prevent torture must be
applied to prevent ill-treatment (para. 3). It also recalls that, according to the same general
comment, the protection of certain minority or marginalized individuals or populations,
such as asylum seekers, who are especially at risk of torture is a part of the obligation to
prevent torture or ill-treatment (para. 21).
8.10 The Committee also recalls that States parties should consider whether other forms
of ill-treatment that a person facing deportation is at risk of experiencing might change so
as to constitute torture before making a non-refoulement assessment. In this regard, severe
pain or suffering cannot always be objectively assessed and it depends on the negative
physical and/or mental repercussions that the infliction of violent or abusive acts has on
each individual, taking into account the relevant circumstances of each case, including the
nature of the treatment, the sex, age and state of health and vulnerability of the victim or
any other status or factors (paras. 16–17). The Committee notes that, in the complainant’s
case, the ill-treatment that he would be exposed to in Italy, together with the absence of a
stable social environment provided by his brother, would entail a risk of his depressive state
worsening to the extent that he would be likely to commit suicide and that, in the
circumstances of this case, this ill-treatment could reach a level comparable to torture. The
Committee is therefore of the view that the deportation of the complainant to Italy would
constitute a breach of article 3 of the Convention.
9.
The Committee, acting under article 22 (7) of the Convention, concludes that the
complainant’s deportation to Italy would constitute a breach of articles 3, 14 and 16 of the
Convention.
10.
The Committee is of the view that, in accordance with articles 3, 14 and 16 of the
Convention, the State party has an obligation to refrain from forcibly returning the
complainant to Italy and to continue complying with its obligation to provide the
complainant, in full consultation with him, with rehabilitation through medical treatment.
Pursuant to rule 118, paragraph 5, of its rules of procedure, the Committee invites the State
party to inform it, within 90 days from the date of the transmittal of the present decision, of
the steps it has taken to respond to the above observations.
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