CAT/C/59/D/634/2014 tortured on a number of occasions. 6 He was shown the video filmed on 15 September 2013, which was apparently found during a special operation on the house of one of the insurgents, who had been killed. The first complainant then told the authorities about the incident of 15 September 2013. To secure his release, the first complainant had to sign a statement that he would cooperate with the authorities. His domestic passport was taken away. On 30 November 2013, 7 he was dropped off on wasteland at the border between Ingushetia and North Ossetia-Alania. He was told that he had been lucky because normally, he would have been shot. He went to a friend’s house and stayed there until he fled the Russian Federation on 1 January 2014 with his pregnant wife and their child. 8 2.5 The first, second and third complainants arrived in Denmark on 5 January 2014 and applied for asylum on the same day. The first and second complainants were interviewed by the Danish Immigration Service on 7 February and 24 March 2014. On 27 March 2014, the Danish Immigration Service rejected the first complainant’s asylum application on the ground that, on central points, he had made inconsistent statements about the incident that gave rise to the authorities’ interest in him. Furthermore, he and the second complainant had provided contradictory information regarding the dates and circumstances of the seizure of their identity documents by the Federal Security Bureau during one of the searches of their parents’ house after the complainants’ departure from the Russian Federation. The Danish Immigration Service therefore found that the complainants would not risk persecution or torture upon their return to the Russian Federation. 2.6 On 16 July 2014, the second complainant gave birth to her and the first complainant’s second child, D.B. On 5 September 2014, the Danish Immigration Service upheld its decision of 27 March 2014, thereby extending the refusal to grant asylum to comprise the fourth complainant. That decision was appealed to the Refugee Appeals Board on 5 September 2014. 2.7 On 12 September 2014, at the beginning of the hearing before the Refugee Appeals Board, the complainants’ counsel requested the Board to order an examination of the first complainant for signs of torture. On the same day, the Board upheld the rejection by the Danish Immigration Service of the first complainant’s asylum application without summoning him for the aforementioned examination. It found that he had failed to substantiate the grounds for asylum relied upon and did not accept his statement provided in support of the asylum application to be factual. In that respect, the Board emphasized that the first complainant had made inconsistent statements about the incident that gave rise to the authorities’ interest in him, namely about the goods that he had delivered, the language used by one of the two men in the telephone conversation on 15 September 2013 and the place to which he had delivered goods. The Board further emphasized that the first complainant had also made inconsistent statements about the circumstances when he woke up in prison, including whether he was alone in the cell, whether he was doused in water 6 7 8 Russian special services demanded that he admit that he was an accomplice of terrorists and insurgents. According to the first complainant’s statements made at different stages of the asylum proceedings, a plastic bag was put over his head, and he was punched and hit with sticks in the abdomen, liver and kidneys. He was also verbally abused, kicked in the hollows of his knees, burned with cigarette butts and subjected to other humiliating forms of torture and ill-treatment. At the asylum screening interview conducted by the Danish Immigration Service, the first complainant initially stated that he had been released on 30 November or 1 December 2013 and then, having checked his calendar, clarified that he had been released on 3 December. The first complainant’s driving licence, the second complainant’s domestic passport and the third complainant’s birth certificate were taken away by the two men who transported the complainants in a minibus from the Russian Federation to a “safe place”, which turned out to be Denmark, and never given back to them. The complainants never had international passports that would allow them to leave the Russian Federation legally. 3