CAT/C/63/D/488/2012 political opponent and an enemy of the State, which places him personally at risk of torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment given the Rwandan Government’s policy of eliminating the opposition. 5.6 The facts presented by Ms. M. are not only known to her personally but are also corroborated by court documents and publications. She describes the judicial and prison conditions to which the complainant would be exposed and links them to the way in which the complainant is viewed by the Rwandan Government. As a lawyer accredited to argue cases before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, her comments can be taken to be impartial and truthful. Her comments reflect five years of close observation on the ground and describe a situation and practices that are firmly entrenched; in the light of those practices and recent reports on Rwanda from human rights organizations, it is reasonable to believe that the situation remains the same. 5.7 Mr. P. mentions cases in which political opponents of the Rwandese Patriotic Front were accused of involvement in the genocide in order to demonstrate how the Rwandan Government violates opponents’ fundamental rights and thereby illustrate the personal risk faced by the complainant as a political opponent. 5.8 The complainant feels that these documents shed light on the flaws in the Rwandan judicial and prison systems. Deliberately preventing an individual from having access to a full and complete defence is liable to cause him or her psychological suffering that could amount to torture. Moreover, the improvements referred to by the State party concern only legislative measures. 5.9 The decisions which the State party cites as instances in which extradition was granted of persons accused in connection with the genocide to Rwanda are not binding upon the Committee; nor do those decisions have any probative value, since the evaluation of risk is specific to each case. Those cases must therefore be considered separately from the complainant’s case. In addition, most of those cases were analysed with reference to the mechanism of the Act concerning transfer of cases and in the light of guarantees that are not applicable to the complainant. In Ahorugeze v. Sweden, the decision of the European Court of Human Rights to allow extradition was primarily based on a risk assessment conducted as part of the monitoring mechanism established pursuant to the Act, which does not apply to the complainant’s case. The improvements referred to in relation to the rule of law essentially refer to legislative amendments and are therefore purely theoretical. 5.10 In the Uwinkindi case, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda simply established the absence of risk and noted improvements in prison conditions as they related to the Act concerning transfer of cases, but it did not really evaluate the situation on the ground outside the framework of the mechanism provided for by the Transfer Act. No monitoring mechanism is in place that would ensure the appropriateness of prison conditions in the complainant’s case. 5.11 In its concluding observations on Rwanda, the Committee expressed concern about the risk of torture, particularly in the case of political prisoners, and about prison conditions. 11 , 12 The complainant refers to NGO reports which note an increase in the number of instances of unlawful detention during which acts of torture and other forms of ill-treatment are committed.13 5.12 The complainant does not consider diplomatic assurances to be reliable. For that matter, they have not been honoured with regard to guarantees of a fair trial, an effective defence or compliance with international standards in relation to the complainant’s conditions of detention. Before the complainant was sent back to Rwanda, the Rwandan authorities had not been called upon to engage in any diplomatic undertaking of the sort, as national courts in States hosting Rwandan refugees accused of involvement in the genocide categorically refused to extradite them because of serious fears about the use of torture. It was therefore impossible for the State party to properly evaluate the likelihood that Rwanda 11 12 13 8 CAT/C/RWA/CO/1, para. 10. Ibid., paras. 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 19, 23 and 24. Amnesty International, Amnesty International Report 2012: The State of the World’s Human Rights, p. 293. GE.18-15056