CAT/C/30/D/191/2001 page 9 Complainant’s comments on the State party’s submissions 5.1 Counsel submits that the complainant was precluded from contesting the IND’s decision of 20 May 1999 on the merits, because he had already objected to the IND’s failure to take a timely decision on his asylum application, thereby losing the possibility to submit arguments on the substance of his application to the IND before bringing the case to court. 5.2 With regard to the medical evidence, counsel criticizes that the medical advice of the BMA was limited to the question whether the complainant’s medical condition required his admission as a refugee without examining the issue whether his medical complaints as well as his scars corroborated his allegations of torture. Counsel further claims that the State party has failed to appreciate the weight of the medical report by the Amnesty International medical examination group, whose reports are only issued in a small number of credible cases. 5.3 As regards the general situation in Sri Lanka, counsel complains that the State party primarily based its assessment on the country reports issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, without considering other relevant sources. 5.4 With respect to the State party’s challenge to the complainant’s credibility, counsel denies that his client’s statements were inconsistent. He submits that the State party’s observation that the complainant qualified the interview translation as “poor” is a simplification of his argument. What he emphasized were the different possibilities of translating the word “hiding” into Dutch, each carrying with it a different meaning. 5.5 Counsel submits that the complainant cannot reasonably be expected to prove in detail how his release from the military hospital in Trincomalee came about. 5.6 As to the complainant’s personal risk to be tortured upon return to Sri Lanka, counsel submits that his reputation as a karate teacher increases this risk. In this respect, counsel criticizes the State party’s failure to consider the statements on the complainant’s karate background which his brother made in the context of his asylum application in the Netherlands. According to these statements, the complainant had left Sri Lanka in 1984 to live in Qatar (until 1987) because he was suspected of training LTTE militants. Furthermore, counsel argues that the fact that the complainant was tortured in the past, combined with the general danger of LTTE suspects to be tortured, connotes a high risk that he would be detained and subjected to torture if he were to be returned to Sri Lanka. This risk was increased by the likelihood that the complainant’s name had been entered into the database of the National Intelligence Bureau when he was arrested in Trincomalee in 1996. Counsel considers it likely that, during a routine screening of rejected Tamil asylum-seekers by the Sri Lankan authorities, the complainant’s arrest and detention in the military camp would come to light together with the information that he worked as a karate teacher in Jaffna. Moreover, the scars on his body would raise the suspicion that he had been involved in the armed combat of LTTE. Counsel concludes that the combination of these facts would expose the complainant to a high personal risk of being subjected to torture going beyond a “mere possibility”.