CAT/C/48/D/433/2010 8.4 With regard to the complainant’s letter dated 3 February 2011 which states that he refuses to testify further and that he recants his testimonies, it does not indicate any wish to withdraw the complaint before the Committee. The complainant wrote this letter after testifying that he was under pressure to withdraw his case. At around the same time, an investigator showed him statements from the police officers who tortured him promising not to accuse him of libel if he withdrew. The State party also mentions that the complainant was interrogated by police on 6 February 2011 about the circumstances of writing the 3 February letter, and the record of the interrogation in which the complainant purportedly refuses to testify further confirms that this interrogation was held without a lawyer, as the police obtained from him a statement refusing the services of his lawyer. 8.5 As to the typed, notarized letter dated 18 February 2011, in Russian and English, and signed by the complainant, which stated that he wished to withdraw his complaint to the Committee as he had acted “in a temper, in a painful nervous condition”, legal representatives consulted the complainant and were not instructed to withdraw the complaint before the Committee. The so-called withdrawal letter has been obtained in the following circumstances: following a visit from two police investigators, the complainant had written the 3 February letter and, a few days later, one of the police investigators took him to the notary’s office where he was given a printed document which he quickly looked at and signed. Thus, the typed letter dated 18 February 2011 and sent to the Committee was prepared by the State party, rather than by the complainant himself, was altered in a significant way from the original handwritten letter, and was signed as a result of the same pressure. 8.6 The purported withdrawal letter relied upon by the State party is in contrast to the repeated, detailed and consistent testimony which the complainant has given of the torture to which he was subjected. The power of attorney signed by the complainant on 22 February 2010 confirms that he authorizes the Open Society Justice Initiative and the Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights and the Rule of Law to be his representatives before the Committee and to submit applications and other filings on his behalf. Furthermore, he personally signed each page of his statement which was filed with the complaint.18 In the circumstances, neither the 3 February letter, the 6 February interrogation, nor the 18 February letter constitutes a free and unequivocal expression of intent to withdraw his complaint, and therefore should not bar the Committee from considering the substance of the complaint. 8.7 None of the arguments presented by the State party undermine the consistent accounts which the complainant has given of his torture, but rather corroborate key elements of his narrative and confirm that the renewed investigation was not effective. The State party agrees that the complainant and his stepsons promptly made statements complaining that the police had inflicted physical and mental suffering on them to try and obtain confessions. The complainant maintained this consistent account during many of the questioning sessions in the renewed investigation in January 2011 and the State party concedes that he testified that he was mistreated by police. It is uncontested that he immediately sought medical attention and told the doctors that he had sustained injuries at the hands of police. However, the State party arbitrarily rejects the evidence, failing to respond to the numerous consistent statements made in the original investigation and in January 2011, but instead attempts to dismiss the complainant’s evidence as “inconsistent” or being given “in a fit of anger” or “in a nervous condition”. 8.8 It is recalled that the psychiatric evaluation of 18 January 2011, ordered “to establish the mental state of the victim, since there is a doubt in his ability to correctly perceive the 18 12 The author indeed signed each page of the Russian version of his complaint to the Committee.