CCPR/C/121/D/2643/2015 family members, including her brothers, in Sri Lanka, and could therefore rely on a male social network in Sri Lanka. 4.16 The State party recalls that the Board thoroughly examined each of the author’s claims and found that several points of her claims regarding her and her family’s affiliation with LTTE were not credible. In her communication to the Committee, the author merely disagrees with the Board’s assessment of the evidence and its factual conclusions, without demonstrating that the assessment was arbitrary or otherwise amounted to a denial of justice. Therefore, the State party submits that the author is in fact trying to use the Committee as an appellate body to have the factual circumstances of her case reassessed. 4.17 In conclusion, the State party reiterates that the author has failed to establish that there are substantial grounds for believing that she and her children would be in danger of being subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment if returned to Sri Lanka. Accordingly, it submits that their return to Sri Lanka would not constitute a violation of article 7 of the Covenant and requests the Committee to lift the interim measures that it granted. Author’s comments on the State party’s observations on admissibility and the merits 5.1 On 23 June 2016, the author submitted that there was no basis for concluding that she had failed to establish a prima facie case for the purpose of admissibility of her communication under article 7 of the Covenant. 5.2 She claims to have substantiated the specific reasons why she fears that a forcible return to Sri Lanka would result in a risk for her and her children of treatment incompatible with article 7 of the Covenant. The author claims to have substantiated why she believes that the findings of the Danish Refugee Appeals Board, including the assessment of relevant background information on LTTE affiliations and persecution in Sri Lanka, were flawed. She submits that the assessment of her credibility with regard to her direct and indirect affiliation with LTTE was not carried out thoroughly in the context of the Board’s decisions of 10 January 2014 and 22 June 2015, since no oral hearing was conducted to verify the credibility of her statements. 5.3 The author contends that the State party’s decisions of 10 January 2014 and 22 June 2015, in which it refused to reopen her case without an oral hearing, violated her rights under article 13 of the Covenant on its own, or read in conjunction with article 7 of the Covenant. In this connection, she considers that the State party’s authorities did not thoroughly examine her new statements regarding her affiliation with LTTE. 5.4 The author argues that article 13 of the Covenant provides for two-stage expulsion procedures, with one stage relating to the expulsion order itself and the other to the review of the order. Accordingly, the applicant must be allowed to submit his or her arguments against the first decision, including the possibility to present relevant evidence and have the case reviewed. The guarantees provided for under article 13 are generally fulfilled under the Danish law governing the review and appeal of decisions by the Danish Immigration Service to the Board. However, a substantive assessment of the presented evidence is necessary. Where evidence relies on statements made by the applicant, the Board must assess the evidence and statements in an oral hearing. In the present case, the State party rejected the author’s subsequent statements related to her own affiliation with LTTE on the ground that they were inconsistent with earlier claims related to her husband’s affiliation. Nonetheless, the authorities did not provide the author with a two-stage assessment, initially through the Danish Immigration Service and subsequently before the Board, and they did not give her the opportunity to have an oral hearing, which would have been essential to assess the credibility of her statements and to accept or dismiss them. 5.5 The author argues that the State party’s conclusion as to her lack of credibility and the consequent dismissal of her statements regarding her own and her brother’s affiliation with LTTE cannot be considered to be based on a proper assessment by the Board, as the assessments were in writing only. In its decision of 10 January 2014, the Board rejected the author’s new statements under section 40 of the Danish Aliens Act, as the author was obliged to give all relevant information to the authorities, which she had not done during 9